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The Impact and Inefficiency of the Corporate Income Tax: Evidence from State Organizational Form Data

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Austan Goolsbee

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Abstract

By double taxing the income of corporate firms but not unincorporated firms, taxes can play an important role in a firm's choice of organizational form. The sensitivity of the organizational form decision to tax rates can also be used to approximate the efficiency cost of the corporate income tax. This paper uses new cross-sectional data on organizational form across states compiled in the Census of Retail Trade to estimate this sensitivity. The results document a significant impact of the relative taxation of corporate to personal income on the share of economic activity that is done by corporations including sales, employment, and the number of firms. The impacts are substantially larger than those found in the previous empirical literature based on time-series data.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 9141.

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Date of creation: Sep 2002
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9141

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure

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  1. Charles L. Ballard & John B. Shoven & John Whalley, 1985. "The Welfare Cost of Distortions in the United States Tax System: A General Equilibrium Approach," NBER Working Papers 1043, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Roger H. Gordon & Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, 1992. "Tax Distortions to the Choice of Organizational Form," NBER Working Papers 4227, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Feldstein, Martin & Dicks-Mireaux, Louis & Poterba, James, 1983. "The effective tax rate and the pretax rate of return," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 129-158, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Austan Goolsbee, 1997. "Taxes, Organizational Form, and the Deadweight Loss of the Corporate Income Tax," NBER Working Papers 6173, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Gentry, William M., 1994. "Taxes, financial decisions and organizational form : Evidence from publicly traded partnerships," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 223-244, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Myron S. Scholes & Mark A. Wolfson, 1991. "The Role of Tax Rules in the Recent Restructuring of U.S. Corporations," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 5, pages 1-24 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
  7. Goolsbee, Austan & Maydew, Edward L., 2000. "Coveting thy neighbor's manufacturing: the dilemma of state income apportionment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 125-143, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Gravelle, Jane G & Kotlikoff, Laurence J, 1989. "The Incidence and Efficiency Costs of Corporate Taxation When Corporate and Noncorporate Firms Produce the Same Good," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 749-80, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Jonathan Levin, 2002. "A Theory of Partnerships," Theory workshop papers 505798000000000002, UCLA Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  10. Gordon, Roger H & Wilson, John Douglas, 1986. "An Examination of Multijurisdictional Corporate Income Taxation under Formula Apportionment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(6), pages 1357-73, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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(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.)

  1. Reuven Avi-Yonah, 2005. "The Pitfalls of International Integration: A Comment on the Bush Proposal and its Aftermath," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 87-95, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Raj Chetty & Emmanuel Saez, 2004. "Dividend Taxes and Corporate Behavior: Evidence from the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut," NBER Working Papers 10841, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Martin D. Dietz & Christian Keuschnigg, 2003. "Corporate Income Tax Reform in Switzerland," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2003 2003-07, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Reuven Avi-Yonah, . "The Pitfalls of International Integration: A Comment on the Bush Proposal and Its Aftermath," University of Michigan John M. Olin Center for Law & Economics Working Paper Series umichlwps-1007, University of Michigan John M. Olin Center for Law & Economics. [Downloadable!]
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