Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP10198
Authors: Salvador Barrios; Gatan Nicodeme; Antonio Jesus Sanchez Fuentes
Abstract: The present study provides estimates of the Effective Marginal Tax Rates (EMTRs) for a sample of 17 OECD countries and 11 manufacturing sectors in a single framework encompassing capital, labour and energy taxes. Our cross-country/cross-sector approach allows us comparing the incentives provided by the tax systems and gauging the effects of tax changes taking explicitly into account the possible substitution between factors as well as their tax incidence. Our results suggest that the OECD tax systems provide different incentives for manufacturing activity across countries and that tax systems are relatively neutral with respect to the sectoral composition of manufacturing activities. The impact of potential tax increases on firms´ activity is found to be most attenuated when shifted towards consumers and/or employees rather than energy consumption and/or capital investors. These results are robust to alternative hypotheses regarding the tax incidence parameters, elasticity of substitution between factors and mark-up on final prices. In addition, policy strategies favouring tax increases on energy consumption and lowering taxes on labour can substantially reduce the EMTRs and thus yield substantial efficiency gains for firms. These reforms should in some instances be ambitious enough to produce desired effects on firms? EMTRs, however.
Keywords: effective taxation; tax incidence; taxation
JEL Codes: H20; H22; H24; H25
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| tax system (H20) | manufacturing activity (L60) |
| tax burden shifted towards consumers/employees (H22) | firms' activity (D22) |
| increase energy taxes while decreasing labor taxes (H31) | EMTRs and efficiency gains for firms (F12) |