 Evaluating the innovation box tax policy instrument in the Netherlands, 2007–13Pierre Mohnen, Arthur Vankan and Bart Verspagen Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2017, vol. 33, issue 1, 141-156 Abstract: Patent boxes are tax incentive schemes aimed at stimulating research and development (R&D) in firms by providing favourable tax rates to profits that can be linked to a specific immaterial asset, such as a patent. Because these profits are often hard to separate from other firm profits, patent boxes have been argued to be prone to tax shifting of firms, and tax competition between nations, as they might shift the location of the profits without affecting the location of R&D activities. Whether or not this occurs may also depend on conditions set in the patent box. We evaluate the innovation box policy instrument in the Netherlands, which is essentially a patent box, but without the formal requirement of a patent. We ask whether the innovation box has an effect on local R&D investment of the firm (‘additionality’), thereby putting the hypothesis of tax shifting to the test. We find that the innovation box indeed has a positive effect on R&D investment, but the average firm that uses the policy tends to use only a part of the tax advantage for extra R&D investment. Keywords: R&D policy; R&D tax incentives; patent boxes; tax shifting (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxford:v:33:y:2017:i:1:p:141-156. Access Statistics for this article Oxford Review of Economic Policy is currently edited by Christopher Adam More articles in Oxford Review of Economic Policy from Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited |
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