Wage Incidence of a Large Corporate Tax Credit: Contrasting Employee - and Firm - Level Evidence

The present paper sheds new light on the incidence of firm taxation by exploiting the design of a large-scale corporate income tax credit in France. The tax credit is proportional to the wage bill of workers paid below a hourly wage threshold, which induces a discontinuity in mandatory levies at the employee level. We use discontinuities at the employee level in order to estimate firm-level incidence. This turns out to be the relevant level for the effects of the policy, which would be undetectable with an estimation focused on the employee level impact of the shock. Relying on exhaustive matched employer-employee data, we find a discrepancy between the absence of incidence at the employee level and a substantial incidence on wages at the firm level, around 50%. We find more over that the policy in question has stark (anti)-redistributive effects. The tax cut is targeting the lowest part of wage earners, but the benefits accrue to other employees inside the firm, who earn substantially higher wages on average.