The Effect of the Tax System as an Institutional Factor on the Business Structure in Europe

Zoltán Bartha

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This chapter focuses on the influence of tax systems and taxation rules on the firm structure of the 28 European Union member economies. It is argued that higher taxes and more complex tax rules lead to smaller firms, and that, on the other hand reduces macroeconomic perfor-mance. It is found that the firm size and corporate tax rates are negatively correlated in case of medium-sized (R=-0.4; p=0.03) and large (R=-0.41; p=0.03) firms. Indications were found that higher transaction costs caused by taxation lead to smaller firms, as a significant negative correlation was found between the number of hours per year needed to administer tax pay-ments, and the share of large firms (R=-0.41 & p=0.03), and also between KPMG’s comment length (an indicator for tax system complexity) and the share of medium-sized firms’ turnover from the total turnover (R=-0.39 & p=0.045). More complicated tax rules might also cause a smaller proportion of firms to grow quicker, but the significance level of these relationships is not very convincing.

Keywords: tax system; tax rate; institutions; firm size (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H21 L11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06-19, Revised 2015-09-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-bec, nep-pbe and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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