Suchergebnisse

In this paper we analyze the effect of investor level taxes, firm-specific ownership structure and firm-specific payout policy on firms' capital structure choice. Our analysis is based on data for 10,983 firms from 13 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries over the time period 2002-2012. Our results show a significant impact of the net tax benefit of debt on the debt ratio of firms. Ignoring firm heterogeneity, an increase in the net tax benefit of debt by 10 percentage points leads to an increase in the debt ratio of 2.49 percentage points. Taking into account investor-level taxation and firm heterogenity, an increase in the net tax benefit of debt of 10 percentage points leads to an increase in the debt ratio of only 1.27 percentage points, if the firm's largest individual domestic owner has more than 50% of the shares. If all individual domestic owners together have more than 50% of the shares, an increase in the net tax benefit of debt of 10 percentage points leads to a negligible increase in the debt ratio of 0.05 percentage points.

This paper analyzes the Croatian legislation on Value Added Tax (VAT) during the period 1995-2008. First, we describe the most important VAT reforms. We show that the preferential tax treatment of particular products and industries fails to reach the tax legislator's economic and socio-political objectives. Despite some changes of the VAT law since 1999 the Croatian VAT is characterized by relatively infrequent reforms and few distortions, compared to international practice. However, the neutrality properties of the VAT are substantially distorted by the administrative practice. Although the tax law clearly states that input VAT is deductible, tax authorities routinely try to prevent deduction of input VAT. We describe the tax authorities' typical procedures to achieve this goal. To analyze whether the VAT also receives particular attention by the judiciary, we evaluate 389 verdicts of the Croatian Supreme Administrative Court. It can be shown that the VAT is prone to litigation, especially since 2005. The frequency of VAT-related lawsuits can be mainly attributed to inadequate administration of the VAT by the tax authorities. As a result of our analysis, we show that simply interpreting the law is not sufficient for a comprehensive analysis of tax effects. Rather, it is necessary to include legislation, executive, and judiciary. ; In diesem Beitrag wird die kroatische Mehrwertsteuergesetzgebung von 1995 bis 2008 analysiert. Wir beschreiben die wichtigsten Gesetzesänderungen und zeigen, dass die vom Steuergesetzgeber mit der Begünstigung bestimmter Produkte und Branchen intendierten wirtschafts- und sozialpolitischen Effekte weitgehend verfehlt werden. Dennoch ist die kroatische MwSt im internationalen Vergleich durch relativ seltene Gesetzesänderungen und wenige Neutralitätsverletzungen gekennzeichnet. Dass die Neutralitätseigenschaften der MwSt in der Praxis nicht zum Vorschein kommen, beruht auf der mangelhaften Administration der MwSt durch die Steuerverwaltung. Wir beschreiben typische Vorgehensweisen, mit denen die Steuerverwaltung die weitgehende Versagung des gesetzlich vorgesehenen Vorsteuerabzugs anstrebt. Zur Untersuchung der Frage, ob die MwSt auch in der steuerlichen Judikatur eine Sonderrolle einnimmt, werten wir 389 Steuerurteile des kroatischen Verwaltungsgerichts aus. Die vergleichsweise hohe Streitanfälligkeit der MwSt seit 2005 dürfte eine Folge der administrativen Praxis sein. Als Ergebnis zeigen wir, dass die Auswertung von Gesetzestexten nicht ausreichend für die Beurteilung der realen Entscheidungswirkungen eines Steuersystems ist. Vielmehr bedarf es der Betrachtung aller staatlichen Gewalten: Exekutive, Legislative und Judikative.

Der Beitrag untersucht für am SMI kotierte Unternehmen, ob diese Aktienrückkäufe als Substitute oder Komplemente für Nennwertrückzahlungen und Dividendenzahlungen verwenden. Durch die Verwendung einer Regressionsanalyse können unternehmensspezifische Faktoren wie der Verschuldungsgrad und die Unternehmensgrösse oder branchenspezifische Besonderheiten isoliert werden. Es wird gezeigt, dass Aktienrückkäufe statistisch signifikant als flexible Ergänzung zur Dividende eingesetzt werden. Nennwertrückzahlungen dagegen dienen tendentiell als Substitut zu Aktienrückkäufen. Unternehmen gehen dabei sequentiell vor: Sie schütten zunächst steuerfreies Kapital in Form einer Nennwertrückzahlung aus und nutzen anschliessend Aktienrückkäufe als flexibles Ausschüttungsinstrument. Insofern berücksichtigen Manager bei der Ausschüttungsentscheidung steuerliche Optimierungsüberlegungen. ; The paper analyzes whether Swiss SMI corporations use share repurchases to replace or to complement par value repayments or dividend payments. By means of a regression analysis we separate firm-specific and industry-specific influences. We show that share repurchases are used in addition to dividend payments rather than substituting them. In contrast, par value repayments are typically replaced by share repurchases. Corporations use the methods one after another: They first make use of tax-free par value repayment, and in the following year they repurchase outstanding shares for the purpose of redemption. This shows that corporations take taxes into account when optimizing their payout strategies.

The contribution Bach, Corneo, and Steiner (2008) has argued that the rich" do not pay taxes adequately in relation to their income, finding, for instance, an effective tax rate of only 38.1% for the 0.001% fractile of German income taxpayers in 2001. This result contrasts sharply with the legislated top marginal income tax rate of 48.5%. We subject the results contained in Bach, Corneo, and Steiner (2008) to a rigorous analysis: We find major flaws and inconsistencies with regard to methodology, i.e. the omission of corporate taxes and inter-temporal aspects of taxation. Restating basic rules for the measurement of effective tax rates, we provide values for what we term the comprehensive nominal tax rate" (CNTR) and show that the headline result in Bach, Corneo, and Steiner (2008) of 38.1% is underestimated by over 12 percentage points. As an important distributional result, the CNTR increases with increasing taxable income.

The contribution Bach, Corneo and Steiner (2008) has argued that "the rich" do not pay taxes adequately in relation to their income, finding, for instance, an effective tax rate of only 38.1% for the 0.001% fractile of German income taxpayers in 2001. This result contrasts sharply with the legislated top marginal income tax rate of 48.5%. We subject the results contained in Bach, Corneo and Steiner (2008) to a rigorous analysis: We find major flaws and inconsistencies with regard to methodology, i.e. the omission of corporate taxes and inter-temporal aspects of taxation. Restating basic rules for the measurement of effective tax rates, we provide values for what we term the "comprehensive nominal tax rate" (CNTR) and show that the headline result in Bach, Corneo and Steiner (2008) of 38.1% is underestimated by over 12 percentage points. As an important distributional result, the CNTR increases with increasing taxable income.

The introduction of a common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB) and tax allocation via formula apportionment (FA) is hotly debated in the European Union (EU) since more than a decade. While the literature has thoroughly analyzed the economic effects of FA from a macro-level perspective, the firm view has been added only recently. Within this micro-level framework discussing possible tax-induced distortions of multi-jurisdictional entities' (MJE) decisions becomes feasible. Anticipating the reactions of MJEs to the introduction of FA requires considering delegation and incentivisation, because management decisions are influenced by principal agent relationships. How FA affects the demand for managerial effort is a hitherto neglected research question. Accordingly, the objective of this paper is to highlight the tax-induced distortions of managerial incentives caused by FA. For this purpose we set up a LEN-type principal-agent model with agents in two different jurisdictions. Compared to the case with separate taxation (ST) the principal demands increased effort and pays an increased compensation to managers in low-tax jurisdictions, if payroll enters the FA formula. Managers in high-tax jurisdictions face the opposite effect. Further, the composition of the compensation packages changes. Overall, net profit increases, because FA offers potential for profit shifting.

The introduction of a common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB) and tax allocation via formula apportionment (FA) is hotly debated in the European Union (EU) since more than a decade. While the literature has thoroughly analyzed the economic effects of FA from a macro-level perspective, the firm view has been added only recently. Within this micro-level framework discussing possible tax-induced distortions of multi-jurisdictional entities' (MJE) decisions becomes feasible. Anticipating the reactions of MJEs to the introduction of FA requires considering delegation and incentivisation, because management decisions are influenced by principal agent relationships. How FA affects the demand for managerial effort is a hitherto neglected research question. Accordingly, the objective of this paper is to highlight the tax-induced distortions of managerial incentives caused by FA. For this purpose we set up a LEN-type principal-agent model with agents in two different jurisdictions. Compared to the case with separate taxation (ST) the principal demands increased effort and pays an increased compensation to managers in low-tax jurisdictions, if payroll enters the FA formula. Managers in high-tax jurisdictions face the opposite effect. Further, the composition of the compensation packages changes. Overall, net profit increases, because FA offers potential for profit shifting.

Multinational groups (MNGs) produce a major part of global output. Further, a substantial fraction of international transactions happens to be internal, i.e., intermediate products and services are traded between group members. Thus, the problem of co-ordinating economic decisions like investment or production within such large entities has been widely recog-nized in the theoretical and empirical literature. The findings suggest that transfer prices are a widespread device for splitting up complex decision situations and allocating the responsibility for the resulting subproblems to several decision makers. Apart from its co-ordination function transfer pricing is also used for tax purposes. Legally independent group members realize intra-group sales and contribute to a single product. Taxable group profits are often allocated among the participating companies by means of transfer prices. In this case, from the group's perspective, transfer pricing is a device of international tax planning. Of course, national tax authorities have been aware of potential misuse. In Europe, the problem has become especially severe since the mid-European countries joined the EU. Due to the emerging large tax rate differentials, tax revenues of high-tax legislations eroded. For mitigating this problem formula apportionment (FA) is discussed intensively. Under FA, a common tax base is calculated and divided among the host countries in accordance with given apportionment factors. As a consequence, earnings management fails to re-allocate profits to low-tax legislations and tax base erosion seems to be stopped. However, FA could even be more harmful than transfer pricing because under FA income shifting would require changing economic decisions instead of just taking advantage of accounting options. In addition to the erosion of tax revenues, capital investments and employment could decrease in high-tax legislations. The goal of our paper is to analyze the impact of different international tax allocation regimes on the MNG's investment and production decisions. In our theoretical model, we derive optimal decisions under transfer pricing and FA. A prominent result of our analysis is that FA offsets the advantages of decision decentralization as it reverses the separation of responsibility areas. It is not clear whether FA is desirable from a fiscal or an entrepreneurial perspective. We show that the effects of FA compared to transfer pricing depend strongly on the parameter setting under consideration. One of the most important determinants is the internal decision procedure within the MNG.