This paper discusses the role of multinational firms and double taxation treaties for corporate income taxation in open economies. We show that it is optimal for a small open economy to levy positive corporate income taxes if multinational firms are taxed according to the full taxation after deduction system or the foreign tax credit system. Positive corporate taxes also occur in the asymmetric case where some countries apply the exemption system and others apply the tax credit system. If all countries apply the exemption system, the optimal corporate income tax is zero. We also show that, under tax competition, corporate income taxes are not necessarily too low from the perspective of the economy as a whole. While the undertaxation result is confirmed for the case of the exemption system, tax rates may also be inefficiently high if the deduction or the credit systems are applied. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2002
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 9 (2002) Issue (Month): 5 (September) Pages: 567-589 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)