The impact of tax changes on the short-run investment behaviour of New Zealand firms

Richard Fabling, Richard Kneller and Lynda Sanderson

No 15-04, Working Papers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research

Abstract: This paper examines firm-level investment responses to exogenous changes in the forward looking user cost of capital associated with reforms to the corporate and personal tax system over the last decade. Adjustments to personal tax rates and fiscal depreciation allowances provide a direct lever through which government policy can affect the cost of capital faced by firms. The effect of these tax adjustments differs across firms according to their asset structure, providing both inter-temporal and inter-firm variation in UCCs and enabling an assessment of the short-run impact of UCC changes on investment behaviour. This analysis shows that while tax-induced changes in the UCC have significantly affected investment behaviour among some firms, the aggregate impacts are likely to have been negligible as the industries in which investment impacts are observed make a very small contribution to aggregate investment.

Keywords: Tax; Depreciation; User Cost of Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-pbe and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/15_04.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Tax Changes on the Short-run Investment Behaviour of New Zealand Firms (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mtu:wpaper:15_04

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maxine Watene ().