The Effective Tax Burden of Companies and on Highly Skilled Manpower: Tax Policy Strategies in a Globalized Economy

Christina Elschner, Lothar Lammersen, Michael Overesch and Robert Schwager

No 05-31, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Company taxes and taxes on highly skilled labour both influence the attractiveness of a particular region as a location for investment. We measure the effective tax burden on capital investment and on highly qualified labour in 33 locations across Europe and the United States. We then correlate both types of tax burden in order to study the different tax policy strategies applied in different countries. We identify three causes for different strategies: political institutions, preferences for redistribution and equality, and the position in globalisation and growth. Small countries, high growth rates, and federal structure with high tax autonomy stand for countries with lower tax burdens, especially on companies. Large countries, representative democracies with coalitions, and a high preference for redistribution are likely to induce higher tax burdens.

Keywords: effective tax burden; tax policy; company taxation; personal income tax (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H21 H24 H25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/24122/1/dp0531.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:zbw:zewdip:3186

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().