Corporate Income Taxes under Pressure


Book Description

The book describes the difficulties of the current international corporate income tax system. It starts by describing its origins and how changes, such as the development of multinational enterprises and digitalization have created fundamental problems, not foreseen at its inception. These include tax competition—as governments try to attract tax bases through low tax rates or incentives, and profit shifting, as companies avoid tax by reporting profits in jurisdictions with lower tax rates. The book then discusses solutions, including both evolutionary changes to the current system and fundamental reform options. It covers both reform efforts already under way, for example under the Inclusive Framework at the OECD, and potential radical reform ideas developed by academics.




Taxes and Business Strategy


Book Description

For MBA students and graduates embarking on careers in investment banking, corporate finance, strategy consulting, money management, or venture capital Through integration with traditional MBA topics, Taxes and Business Strategy, Fifth Edition provides a framework for understanding how taxes affect decision-making, asset prices, equilibrium returns, and the financial and operational structure of firms. Teaching and Learning Experience This program presents a better teaching and learning experience-for you and your students: *Use a text from an active author team: All 5 authors actively teach the tax and business strategy course and provide students with relevant examples from both classroom and real-world consulting experience. *Teach students the practical uses for business strategy: Students learn important concepts that can be applied to their own lives. *Reinforce learning by using in-depth analysis: Analysis and explanatory material help students understand, think about, and retain information.




Debt Bias and Other Distortions


Book Description

Tax distortions are likely to have encouraged excessive leveraging and other financial market problems evident in the crisis. These effects have been little explored, but are potentially macro-relevant. Taxation can result, for example, in a net subsidy to borrowing of hundreds of basis points, raising debt-equity ratios and vulnerabilities from capital inflows. This paper reviews key channels by which tax distortions can significantly affect financial markets, drawing implications for tax design once the crisis has passed.




Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis


Book Description

The recent recession has brought fiscal policy back to the forefront, with economists and policy makers struggling to reach a consensus on highly political issues like tax rates and government spending. At the heart of the debate are fiscal multipliers, whose size and sensitivity determine the power of such policies to influence economic growth. Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis focuses on the effects of fiscal stimuli and increased government spending, with contributions that consider the measurement of the multiplier effect and its size. In the face of uncertainty over the sustainability of recent economic policies, further contributions to this volume discuss the merits of alternate means of debt reduction through decreased government spending or increased taxes. A final section examines how the short-term political forces driving fiscal policy might be balanced with aspects of the long-term planning governing monetary policy. A direct intervention in timely debates, Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis offers invaluable insights about various responses to the recent financial crisis.




Curbing Corporate Debt Bias


Book Description

Tax provisions favoring corporate debt over equity finance (“debt bias”) are widely recognized as a risk to financial stability. This paper explores whether and how thin-capitalization rules, which restrict interest deductibility beyond a certain amount, affect corporate debt ratios and mitigate financial stability risk. We find that rules targeted at related party borrowing (the majority of today’s rules) have no significant impact on debt bias—which relates to third-party borrowing. Also, these rules have no effect on broader indicators of firm financial distress. Rules applying to all debt, in contrast, turn out to be effective: the presence of such a rule reduces the debt-asset ratio in an average company by 5 percentage points; and they reduce the probability for a firm to be in financial distress by 5 percent. Debt ratios are found to be more responsive to thin capitalization rules in industries characterized by a high share of tangible assets.




Financial sector taxation


Book Description

"The global economic and financial crisis has created important needs for fiscal consolidation. This document analyses potential instruments to raise additional tax revenues from the financial sector. The first section reviews the current policy objectives related to the taxation of the financial sector. The second section sheds some light on the current tax treatment of the financial sector. The third section discusses potential tax instruments to reach the goals. The fourth and fifth section respectively assess the advantages and drawbacks of a Financial Transaction Tax and a Financial Activities Tax."--Editor.




Tax Policy, Leverage and Macroeconomic Stability


Book Description

Risks to macroeconomic stability posed by excessive private leverage are significantly amplified by tax distortions. ‘Debt bias’ (tax provisions favoring finance by debt rather than equity) has increased leverage in both the household and corporate sectors, and is now widely recognized as a significant macroeconomic concern. This paper presents new evidence of the extent of debt bias, including estimates for banks and non-bank financial institutions both before and after the global financial crisis. It presents policy options to alleviate debt bias, and assesses their effectiveness. The paper finds that thin capitalization rules restricting interest deductibility have only partially been able to address debt bias, but that an allowance for corporate equity has generally proved effective. The paper concludes that debt bias should feature prominently in countries’ tax reform plans in the coming years.




A Review of Taxes and Corporate Finance


Book Description

A Review of Taxes and Corporate Finance investigates the consequences of taxation on corporate finance focusing on how taxes affect corporate policies and firm value. A common theme is that tax rules affect corporate incentives and decisions. A second emphasis is on research that describes how taxes affect costs and benefits. A Review of Taxes and Corporate Finance explores the multiple avenues for taxes to affect corporate decisions including capital structure decisions, organizational form and restructurings, payout policy, compensation policy, risk management, and the use of tax shelters. The author provides a theoretical framework, empirical predictions, and empirical evidence for each of these areas. Each section concludes with a discussion of unanswered questions and possible avenues for future research. A Review of Taxes and Corporate Finance is valuable reading for researchers and professionals in corporate finance, corporate governance, public finance and tax policy.




The Taxation of Petroleum and Minerals


Book Description

Oil, gas and mineral deposits are a substantial part of the wealth of many countries, not least in developing and emerging market economies. Harnessing some part of that wealth for fiscal purposes is critical for economic development: in few areas of economic life are the returns to good policy so large, or mistakes so costly.




Doing Business 2020


Book Description

Seventeen in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2020 measures aspects of regulation affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity.