Cross-Country Comparisons of Corporate Income Taxes

Kevin S. Markle and Douglas Shackelford ()

No 16839, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: To our knowledge, this paper provides the most comprehensive analysis of firm-level corporate income taxes to date. We use publicly available financial statement information for 11,602 public corporations from 82 countries from 1988 to 2009 to estimate country-level effective tax rates (ETRs). We find that the location of a multinational and its subsidiaries substantially affects its worldwide ETR. Japanese firms always faced the highest ETRs. U.S. multinationals are among the highest taxed. Multinationals based in tax havens face the lowest taxes. We find that ETRs have been falling over the last two decades; however, the ordinal rank from high-tax countries to low-tax countries has changed little. We also find little difference between the ETRs of multinationals and domestic-only firms. Besides enhancing our knowledge about international taxes, these findings should provide some empirical underpinning for ongoing policy debates about the taxation of multinationals.

JEL-codes: H25 K34 M41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-02
Note: PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Published as Markle, Kevin S. and Douglas A. Shackelford, “Cross-Country Comparisons of Corporate Income Taxes,” National Tax Journal 65:3, September 2012, 493-527.

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