{"title":"Profit Shifting During Foreign Tax Holidays","authors":"Travis Chow, Jeffrey L. Hoopes, Edward L. Maydew","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3625168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3625168","url":null,"abstract":"We undertake the first empirical analysis of profit shifting by U.S. firms during foreign tax holidays. We show that foreign tax holidays have become a prevalent and powerful tax planning strategy among U.S. firms. We find that U.S. firms significantly increase their outbound profit shifting while participating in foreign tax holidays. However, we also find that profit shifting associated with tax holidays comes at the cost of increased tax uncertainty. Our results have important implications for policy making and for understanding firm behavior.","PeriodicalId":161200,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Firm (Topic)","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126503306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tax Subsidy Information and Local Economic Effects","authors":"L. De Simone, Rebecca Lester, Aneesh Raghunandan","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3482207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3482207","url":null,"abstract":"We examine whether the relation between business tax subsidies and local economic activity varies based on publicly available subsidy information. State and local business incentives have tripled in size over the past thirty years (Bartik, 2019), now amounting to over 40 percent of total state corporate tax revenues (Slattery and Zidar, 2020). However, the subsidy grant process is notoriously opaque, and transparency problems inhibit clear assessments about whether subsidies achieve their intended outcomes. We find that public information about these incentives – measured based on the existence of state-level subsidy disclosure initiatives, the online publication of subsidy details, and ex ante job commitment disclosures – plays a critical role in subsidy effectiveness. Across all three measures, we observe that the positive association between subsidies and establishments occurs only in those counties with greater information. However, we find that employment effects occur only when the subsidies are accompanied by ex ante job commitments, signaling heterogeneity in the extent to which information facilitates job and wage growth. Our large-scale empirical analysis on the role of public subsidy information provides evidence of an important factor previously discussed, but not empirically tested, in public economics. Furthermore, we offer policy-relevant evidence for the increasing number of states implementing subsidy disclosure regimes.","PeriodicalId":161200,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Firm (Topic)","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117227975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The COVID-19 Insolvency Gap: First-Round Effects of Policy Responses on SMEs","authors":"J. Dörr, Simona Murmann, G. Licht","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3783768","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3783768","url":null,"abstract":"COVID-19 placed a special role to fiscal policy in rescuing companies short of liquidity from insolvency. In the first months of the crisis, SMEs as the backbone of Europe’s real economy benefited from large and mainly indiscriminate aid measures. Avoiding business failures in a whatever it takes fashion contrasts, however, with the cleansing mechanism of economic crises: a mechanism which forces unviable firms out of the market, thereby reallocating resources efficiently. By focusing on firms’ pre-crisis financial standing, we estimate the extent to which the policy response induced an insolvency gap and analyze whether the gap is characterized by firms which had already struggled before the pandemic. With the policy measures being focused on smaller firms, we also examine whether this insolvency gap differs with respect to firm size. Based on credit rating and insolvency data for the near universe of actively rated German firms, our results suggest that the policy reponse to COVID-19 has triggered a backlog of insolvencies in Germany that is particularly pronounced among financially weak, small firms, having potential long term implications on economic recovery.","PeriodicalId":161200,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Firm (Topic)","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114146373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Who Benefits from State Corporate Tax Cuts? A Local Labor Markets Approach with Heterogeneous Firms: Comment","authors":"C. Malgouyres, T. Mayer, C. Mazet-Sonilhac","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3721950","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3721950","url":null,"abstract":"Suárez Serrato and Zidar (2016) identify state corporate tax incidence in a spatial equilibrium model with imperfectly mobile firms. Their identification argument rests on comparative statics omitting a channel implied by their model: the link between common determinants of a location’s attractiveness and the average idiosyncratic productivity of firms choosing that location. This compositional margin causes the labor demand elasticity to be independent from the product demand elasticity, impeding the identification of incidence from the four estimated reduced-form effects. Assigning consensual values to the unidentified parameters, we find that the incidence share borne by firm owners is closer to 25 percent than 40 percent. (JEL H22, H25, H32, H71, R23, R51)","PeriodicalId":161200,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Firm (Topic)","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122412577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Do Credit Rating Agencies Care About Our International Tax Planning Strategy When Assigning Credit Ratings?","authors":"Zhiming Ma, D. Stice, Danye Wang","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3759423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3759423","url":null,"abstract":"International tax planning strategies, by their very nature, increase firms’ free cash flows, which could improve companies’ creditworthiness. However, these strategies also bring information and agency problems, which may reduce their creditworthiness. To understand which of these effects dominates, this study examines the effect of international tax planning on credit ratings. We find that credit analysts incorporate information related to international tax planning when analyzing a firm’s credit risk and that high international tax planning is associated with less favorable credit ratings. We also find that this effect is mitigated by a higher conflict of interest for the bond rating agencies. Furthermore, we find that the effect of international tax planning operates through the channels of future cash flow effects, agency costs, and information risk. Our results are robust to a difference-in-differences research design using The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 as an exogenous shock to the benefits from international tax planning, and we document that the effect of international tax planning is different from and incremental to overall tax avoidance.","PeriodicalId":161200,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Firm (Topic)","volume":"408 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132417703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Determination of Executive Actions for Self-Enrichment (EASE) at the Cost of Corporate Integrity","authors":"B. Williams, C. Graham","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3691320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3691320","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the US economy led to an unprecedented bailout in the early days of the subsequent recession. Companies lined up for a share of the funds, but many of them were in our estimation unworthy of assistance given risky use of free cashflow for share repurchases, limiting their ability to adjust to an economic downturn. Our research resulted in the creation of the Executive Actions for Self-Enrichment (EASE) score, a quarterly determination of the companies that are working toward long-term business outcomes vis a vis those working towards hollowing out their business in the pursuit of short-term market gains. Scores were determined through the combination of pricing, key financials, and executive stock sales/purchases via SEC Form 4 data. We believe that EASE is able to accurately identify the overleveraging of debt to buy back company shares while executives offload their equity at artificially-induced prices. Conversely, this data also indicates an outsized return effect for the top decile of long-term-focused businesses. Going forward, we expect that EASE will provide a clear window into how companies are being run in a way that is immediately actionable, providing the public with the means to hold companies accountable via their investment decisions and beyond.","PeriodicalId":161200,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Firm (Topic)","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126052967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jeffrey L. Hoopes, Patrick Langetieg, Edward L. Maydew, M. Mullaney
{"title":"Is Tax Planning Best Done In Private?","authors":"Jeffrey L. Hoopes, Patrick Langetieg, Edward L. Maydew, M. Mullaney","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3420362","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3420362","url":null,"abstract":"We utilize extensive Internal Revenue Service data to investigate the tax behavior of comparable privately-held and publicly-held corporations. Our findings paint a nuanced picture of private versus public firm tax planning. Consistent with prior research, we find that private firms are more willing to engage in tax strategies that also decrease financial accounting income (conforming tax planning). Additionally, we find that private firms are more responsive to shareholder-level dividend taxes. However, tests reveal that private firms engage in either the same or less of other types of tax planning than their public peers. These tests include general measures of nonconforming tax planning and aggressive tax planning, in addition to specific measures such as tax haven usage and use of certain credits and deductions. Overall, our findings suggest that private firms have advantages over their public peers for some types of tax planning, but are not more active tax planners otherwise.","PeriodicalId":161200,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Firm (Topic)","volume":"128 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128462428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Entrepreneur Point-of-View About Policies to Support Innovation in Sharing Economy Era","authors":"G. Gunarso, Julbintor Kembaren","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3398122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3398122","url":null,"abstract":"Entrepreneurship can take form as intrapreneurship within an established company, creation of new businesses, and innovation of processes. Creation of new businesses have important part in prosperity and development of regions, where the entrepreneurs are the actors who make the new businesses. \u0000 \u0000Innovation is both the cause and result of every entrepreneurship, while research and development is the key to that innovation. An invention of product, service, or process has four distinct steps to become an innovation : research, development, demonstration, and commercialization. Authorities and agencies should provide incentives directly affecting the original innovator to reach commercialization of the product, service, or process. \u0000 \u0000In sharing economy, consumers take part as the producers and consumers at the same time, companies no longer completely control the resources they sell, and business models constantly change. To regulate sharing economy, government have five options : entirely ban the sharing economy activities, do not make any new regulation as long as the stakeholders do not professionally conduct their businesses, let the market stakeholders regulate themselves, make entirely new regulations based on the inputs from all stakeholders or make temporary experimental laws. \u0000 \u0000Entrepreneurship promotional agencies should avoid the trap of attracting the relocation of companies or startups from one homogenous sector, instead, the agencies should create conducive ecology for new companies creation and development from diverse sectors. Government and regulators should aim to minimize the policies’ complexity, resource consumption, unnecessary hindrances, to support the entrepreneurs. Government can actively support both conventional companies and sharing economy companies, at the same time, by consulting the affected parties to provide suitable policies for sustainable development.","PeriodicalId":161200,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Firm (Topic)","volume":"85 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123593296","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Information, Asymmetric Incentives, Or Withholding? Understanding the Self-Enforcement of Value-Added Tax","authors":"M. Waseem","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3355865","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3355865","url":null,"abstract":"During the period 1996-2000, the coverage of VAT in Pakistan rose by twenty times in terms of the number of firms in the tax net and by ten times in terms of the volume of transactions subject to it. This paper leverages this staggered introduction of VAT in the country to estimate its enforcement spillovers. Focusing on firms already in the tax net, I explore if their tax compliance improves as VAT gets extended to their trading partners. Using differential responses to upward and downward extension of the tax, I characterize the mechanisms underlying the self-enforcement response.","PeriodicalId":161200,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Firm (Topic)","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115811767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corporate Tax Rates, Allocative Efficiency, and Aggregate Productivity","authors":"Marcos Dinerstein, Fausto Patiño Peña","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3182796","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3182796","url":null,"abstract":"This paper quantifies the impact of effective corporate tax rates on aggregate total factor productivity (TFP). Using Chilean manufacturing data, we document a large dispersion in the effective tax rate faced by firms and a mass of firms facing a 0 percent tax rate. We incorporate these findings into a standard monopolistic competition model with effective corporate tax rates. We find that eliminating corporate tax rates increases TFP between 4 and 11 percent. We consider counterfactual policies in which all firms face the same tax rate and find a monotonically decreasing relationship between the level of the tax rate and TFP.","PeriodicalId":161200,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Firm (Topic)","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115052281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}