This study examines how variations in states’ corporate income tax regimes affect new capital investment by business. Using U.S. state-aggregated data from 1983 to 1996, we find in pooled and fixed-effects regressions that new capital expenditures by corporations in the manufacturing sector are decreasing in the income tax burden on property (measured as the product of the statutory tax rate an...

In this paper I show that, in economies characterized by tax evasion and endogeneity of government spending, the qualitative characterization of the optimal factor income taxes depends on both these factors. In particular, the well known Chamley Judd result that, in the long run, tax rates on capital income should be zero is, in many cases, overturned. It is shown that the nature of tax evasion...

In some classes of models, taxes at the owner level are “neutral” and have no effect on firm activity. However, this tax neutrality is sensitive to assumptions and no longer holds in more complex models. We review recent research that incorporates greater complexity in studying the link between taxes and business activity – particularly entrepreneurship. Dividend taxes on owners of large firms ...

This paper studies how frictions, both real and financial, interact with capital tax policy in a dynamic, general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms. Comparative statics show that tax policy can have substantially different effects depending upon the frictions present. Analytical and numerical exercises show that accounting for firm heterogeneity is important when evaluating the respons...

Analyses of optimal government capital structure generally follow Bohn (1990) and Barro (1995) in assuming risk neutrality or an exogenous risk premium. These analyses usually conclude that the optimal government capital structure stabilizes tax rates over time and states of nature to the greatest extent possible, something known as “tax smoothing.” In this paper, we show that when an endogenou...

Why do capital taxes still exist in an integrated world economy? When capital is perfectly mobile across countries and labour is fixed, a source-based tax on capital both reduces and redistributes world income. In a simple general equilibrium model we show that under plausible circumstances there always exists a country that benefits from introducing such a tax. Countries that are richer in ter...

As an input to its estimates of federal revenues, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) requires an estimate of capital gains realizations in the current calendar year and forecasts of realizations for the next 10 years. The purpose of our study is to improve the accuracy of the current-year estimates. As background, we describe the models and methods that CBO now uses and briefly mention model...

This paper examines optimal factor taxation when output is produced from labour and capital and some (or all) households save capital. It is shown that there is a reputational equilibrium in which the government has no incentive to change its announced tax policies. In this equilibrium, the Judd-Chamley assertion that the tax on capital income tends to zero in the limit holds. This is independe...

While economic deterrence models are fully based on maximizing economic utility; social psychology models explain human behavior by examining the underlying attitudes, norms and beliefs. Tax morale is defined as the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes. However, determinants of tax morale need to be investigated for a more comprehensive understanding of tax morale. In this paper we analyze the mos...