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Tax thy neighbour: local corporate taxes and consumer prices across German regions

Author

Listed:
  • Dedola, Luca
  • Osbat, Chiara
  • Reinelt, Timo

Abstract

To what extent are corporate taxes passed on to consumers? And more generally, how do wholesaleproducers affect retail prices? Using data from Germany, where individual municipalities set local corporate taxrates, we shed new light on these questions. To estimate the impact of changes in producers’ tax rates onconsumer prices, we link 1,058 tax changes between 2013 and 2017 to changes in the retail prices of morethan 125,000 food and personal care products sold across Germany. A one percentage point increase in thelocal corporate tax leads on average to a 0.4% increase in the retail price of goods “exported” by the taxedfirms to stores in the rest of Germany. While neither the size of producers nor their market shares seem toaffect the strength of this pass-through, the type of store selling the product does: supermarkets andhypermarkets account for most of the increase in prices. Our findings suggest the following policy-relevantimplications: i) producers use their market power to shield profits from corporate taxes; ii) some retailers passon a large share of wholesale price changes; iii) the low-inflation period from 2013 to 2017 did not impair thepass-through of shocks to consumer prices. JEL Classification: F12, F45, E13, H71, L11

Suggested Citation

  • Dedola, Luca & Osbat, Chiara & Reinelt, Timo, 2022. "Tax thy neighbour: local corporate taxes and consumer prices across German regions," Research Bulletin, European Central Bank, vol. 95.
  • Handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbrbu:2022:0095:
    Note: 80922
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clemens Fuest & Andreas Peichl & Sebastian Siegloch, 2018. "Do Higher Corporate Taxes Reduce Wages? Micro Evidence from Germany," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(2), pages 393-418, February.
    2. Arnold C. Harberger, 1962. "The Incidence of the Corporation Income Tax," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(3), pages 215-215.
    3. Dedola, Luca & Osbat, Chiara & Reinelt, Timo, 2022. "Tax thy neighbour: Corporate tax pass-through into downstream consumer prices in a monetary union," Working Paper Series 2681, European Central Bank.
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    Cited by:

    1. Dedola, Luca & Gautier, Erwan & Nakov, Anton & Santoro, Sergio & De Veirman, Emmanuel & Henkel, Lukas & Fagandini, Bruno, 2023. "Some implications of micro price-setting evidence for inflation dynamics and monetary transmission," Occasional Paper Series 321, European Central Bank.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    corporate taxes; imperfect competition; producer pass-through to retail prices; vertical interactions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F45 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Macroeconomic Issues of Monetary Unions
    • E13 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Neoclassical
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms

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