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In this thesis I address several neglected issues relating to the theoretical and applied analysis of human capital and the impact of taxation. I begin with the problem of measuring the effective tax rate on human capital accumulation. I develop a forward-looking measure of the effective tax rate that is grounded in human capital theory, allowing for features that differentiate human capital formation from physical capital formation. These features include concavity of the earnings-investment frontier and adjustments in capital utilization through leisure. I argue that the few attempts that have been made to measure the effective tax rate on skill formation are either limited by the fact that they inherit assumptions applicable to the theory of the firm or have dubious theoretical foundations (Chapter Two). The new measure is used to derive the effective tax rate on human capital in 25 OECD countries, including Australia (Chapter Three). While there are numerous general equilibrium models which integrate nominal rigidities of one form or another, little attention has been devoted to nominal rigidities arising from partial indexation of income tax thresholds. No doubt one of the reasons for this gap in the literature is the difficulty associated with introducing a fully specified progressive tax regime into an applied general equilibrium model. I show that this hurdle can be overcome through a zero-profit condition for general equilibrium on the labour market. The condition is integrated into an aggregative model of the economy consisting of two sectors (consumption and education) and two factors of production (skilled and unskilled labour). Since skill formation is endogenous, the model allows us to reopen research into the optimal level of skill formation and the role of government (Chapter Four). An applied general equilibrium version of the model is used to evaluate the impact of recent tax reform proposals on skill formation (Chapter Five). A concluding chapter draws together these lines of enquiry with suggestions for future research (Chapter Six).

In this thesis I address several neglected issues relating to the theoretical and applied analysis of human capital and the impact of taxation. I begin with the problem of measuring the effective tax rate on human capital accumulation. I develop a forward-looking measure of the effective tax rate that is grounded in human capital theory, allowing for features that differentiate human capital formation from physical capital formation. These features include concavity of the earnings-investment frontier and adjustments in capital utilization through leisure. I argue that the few attempts that have been made to measure the effective tax rate on skill formation are either limited by the fact that they inherit assumptions applicable to the theory of the firm or have dubious theoretical foundations (Chapter Two). The new measure is used to derive the effective tax rate on human capital in 25 OECD countries, including Australia (Chapter Three). While there are numerous general equilibrium models which integrate nominal rigidities of one form or another, little attention has been devoted to nominal rigidities arising from partial indexation of income tax thresholds. No doubt one of the reasons for this gap in the literature is the difficulty associated with introducing a fully specified progressive tax regime into an applied general equilibrium model. I show that this hurdle can be overcome through a zero-profit condition for general equilibrium on the labour market. The condition is integrated into an aggregative model of the economy consisting of two sectors (consumption and education) and two factors of production (skilled and unskilled labour). Since skill formation is endogenous, the model allows us to reopen research into the optimal level of skill formation and the role of government (Chapter Four). An applied general equilibrium version of the model is used to evaluate the impact of recent tax reform proposals on skill formation (Chapter Five). A concluding chapter draws together these lines of enquiry with suggestions for future research (Chapter Six).

The focus of my research is dynamic political economy in macroeconomics. The first chapter of my dissertation studies the fact that Countries in the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) vary widely in their ratio of capital tax rates to labor tax rates. This chapter’s motivation is the strong negative correlation between the capital/labor tax ratio and old dependency ratio (defined as the ratio of population older than 65 years old to population between 20 and 65 years old) among 21 OECD countries. I study a parsimonious overlapping generations (OLG) majority voting model. In equilibrium, the retired households and relatively old working households hold a large amount of capital and vote for a low capital tax rate (implying a high labor tax rate), while relatively young working households hold a small amount of capital and vote for a high capital tax rate (implying a low labor tax rate). As a result, the model implies that countries with more old people have relatively lower capital taxes. The model takes the old dependency ratio as given and delivers a capital/labor tax ratio chosen by the median voter. The calibrated model presented here can generate not only this negative correlation, but also the tax ratios for the 21 OECD countries studied. In the second chapter, I extend the first chapter and study the Japanese economy and taxation for the past three decades. Population aging is a serious social issue in Japan. This chapter also shows that demographics is an important variable to explain the time series data of capital and labor tax rates. Interestingly, the model predicts that a benevolent or utilitarian government would set a capital tax rate to be zero as in many standard tax models. This result emphasizes the importance of modeling a political economy, as opposed to a standard social planning economy that has been extensively used previously. Finally, the third chapter focuses on US immigration policy. Illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States has been a hot topic to academic researchers and policy makers. This study quantitatively investigates the welfare effects of illegal immigration to native households in the US. More specifically, I simulate the model economy when the government deports every illegal immigrant. The simulation shows that the social welfare increases by 0.01 percent on average, and the poorest households’ welfare increases by 0.1%. Although, initially, there is a decrease in the interest rate and the unemployment rate as well as an increase in the wage, these variables in the no-illegal-immigrant steady state are almost identical to the initial steady state which is calibrated to the US economy. / text

The thesis entitled Development of the differences between the implicit and the nominal corporate tax rate in the Czech Republic deals with the amount of the implicit and nominal corporate tax rate, particularly the issue of the difference between the amounts of these rates. Examination of the rates follows the description of the characteristics of corporate income tax, the analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of this tax and its share of the total taxation . Furthermore, the thesis analyzed the method of calculating the effective tax rates and implicit tax rates on capital and corporate income. For comparison the thesis includes the analysis of the evolution of nominal and implicit tax rates on corporate income in the European Union and in the Czech Republic . For the final analysis, it is essential that the thesis presented as individual changes in the law on income tax since its introduction into the Czech legal system since 1993 to the present. Only with knowledge of legislative changes, it is possible to determine the relationship between nominal and implicit tax rate on corporate income, which deals with the thesis in the final analysis.

This diploma thesis is focused on measuring the corporate tax burden with the implicit and statutory corporate tax rates within the European Union. The aim of this study is to compare tax burdens across the European Union. Furthermore, to determine whether the implicit tax rate on corporate income depends on the following factors; statutory tax rate, depreciation period of certain assets, tax preferences of research and development, investment incentives or the possibility of transfer of tax losses. In the period 1995 to 2010 the average statutory corporate tax rate decreased significantly. The development of average implicit tax rate on corporate income was not so clear. The differences exist mainly between the Old and New Member States. The performed analysis did not prove dependence of implicit tax rates on corporate income on the above mentioned factors.

本研究旨在探討影響公司有效稅率之相關因素，除了參考國外研究發現之因素，如企業規模、研究發展支出、固定資產淨額、舉債程度、獲利能力及產業別等，並考量我國租稅及商業環境之特色，如：證券及土地交易所得免稅之規定、集團企業因素之影響等，以對影響我國上市（櫃）公司有效稅率之因素做較完整而全面之分析。本研究之研究範圍自民國75年至86年，選擇在台灣證券交易所之股票上市公司，以及在櫃檯買賣中心之股票上櫃公司為研究樣本。 本研究經實證檢定後獲致以下結論： 1. 經由實證結果之驗證，可推論台灣上市（櫃）公司確實會透過證券、土地交易之安排來規避稅賦，藉以降低公司之有效稅率。 2. 集團之上市（櫃）公司，其有效稅率會比非集團之公司為低。並且，同一產業別中，集團之上市（櫃）公司，其有效稅率會比非集團化之公司為低。 3. 實證結果支持政治成本假說。亦即，當公司規模愈大，其政治能見度愈高，所受到的控制監督相對亦較大，其享用之社會資源相對亦較多，因此必須多付出一些政治成本，故有較高之有效稅率。 4. 公司融資舉債的稅盾利益效果相當顯著，故若考量了租稅成本後，公司應該選擇舉債融資而非股權融資，以達租稅最小化之目的。 5. 投資固定資產支出具有折舊及投資抵減的租稅優惠，但省稅效果並不顯著。在研究發展費用方面，實證結果並不如預期，可能係由於次級資料庫中的遺漏值過多，以致最後統計結果之扭曲。 / This study investigates the determinants of corporate effective tax rates (ETRs) in Taiwan, including firm size, R&D expenses, net fixed assets, and leverage. The data used in this study are from 1986-1997. Samples are available from the public traded companies registered in the Taiwan stock exchange and OTC. The conclusions of this study are as follows: 1. The results show that companies reduce their ETRs by engaging in securities and land transactions. 2. Conglomerates’ effective tax rates are lower than non-joint-venture companies. 3. The empirical result support the Political cost hypothesis. The larger the firm sizes are, the greater degrees they are monitored, so they bear greater political costs. 4. The leverage effects and tax dodges benefits are also significant, and if considering tax benefits, companies should prefer debt to stocks in order to minimise their tax expenses.

Le thème général exploré dans cette recherche doctorale est "la Concurrence et la Convergence Fiscales". Examiner les concepts de concurrence et convergence fiscales d'une manière intégrée constitue un objectif important en soi. Cela permet, jusqu'à un certain point, d'apporter une vision innovatrice au problème étudié. Jusqu'ici, la littérature sur la concurrence fiscale ne suggère pas que les taux d'imposition convergent dans l'une ou l'autre direction. Les résultats principaux d'un modèle de concurrence fiscale classique avec des pays symétriques sont que, 1- la mobilité du capital induit un taux d'imposition trop bas par rapport à l'optimum social ; 2- il existe une corrélation négative entre la mobilité du capital et le taux d'imposition sur le capital ; 3- une harmonisation vers le haut des taux d'imposition des capitaux peut produire une amélioration au sens de Pareto. Bien que ces trois points représentent une vision simplificatrice et réductrice d'une longue et riche littérature, ils sont globalement corrects. Un deuxième objectif du travail est de confronter la théorie à la réalité empirique. Cette thèse est composée de "chapitres". Les chapitres 2 à 5 sont constitués, chacun d'un article dans son intégralité. Ceci signifie que le lecteur va retrouver dans chaque chapitre un papier avec introduction, développement et conclusions, et en cas de publication de l'article, une copie de celui-ci dans son format de présentation original. Le chapitre 6 contient les conclusions finales. Bien que chacune des parties constitue un composant isolé, l'enchainement garde un développement logique. Le chapitre 2 définit l'impôt sur lequel on souhaite travailler et présente la littérature sur les taux d'imposition effective avec quelques extensions. Une fois défini l'impôt sur le capital comme l'instrument sur lequel on centre notre attention, le chapitre 3 développe un modèle de concurrence fiscale. Le chapitre 4 observe la concurrence fiscale entre pays et fait un lien avec les mesures de convergence présentées dans le chapitre suivant. D'une manière similaire, le chapitre 5 tente d'observer la convergence fiscale entre pays d'une façon empirique.

The study is concerned with effective tax rates, namely implicit tax rates in the European Union over the period 2000-2012. The theoretical part includes tax incidence, description of individual implicit tax rates and their structure, and Eurostat metodology for measuring the impact of taxation on economic functions. The practical part in mainly dedicated to the development of implicit tax rates in the European Union and then to the evaluation of development trends in the implicit rates on consumption, labour and capital. The analysis is processed in the computer program STATISTICA. The classify is made by cluster analysis that should find the similar implicit tax rates in 2000, 2008 and 2012. Subsequently, the trends ort he development of individual implicit tax rates in EU countries are evaluated.

One way a multinational corporation can further satisfy its primary objective, which is to maximize shareholder wealth, is to minimize the share of its income that is transferred through taxation to the various sovereign nations within which it does business. The profit maximizing firm attempts to maximize (minimize) taxable income in those jurisdictions where income tax burdens are the least (most) in such a way as to diminish the present value of its global total tax burden. While the US corporate income tax rate has remained relatively stable over the decades since most US income tax rates were last slashed as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, across the rest of the world, non-US corporate income tax rates have continued to fall. Even though the US statutory rate was among the lowest corporate income tax rates of any industrialized nation in 1988, by 2008, due to continuing rate decreases around the globe the US rate had become one of the highest corporate income tax rates amongst the G-8. In April of 2012, the US statutory rate as applied to corporate income became the highest among all the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development (OECD) countries. This study will examine the behavior of option intensive corporations during the late 1990's. Coinciding with the longest recorded economic expansion in the history of the United States and coupled with the so-called "internet bubble" during the second half of the decade, this period of rapid stock price appreciation was also a time when many highly profitable companies faced substantially lower current US tax liabilities due to the large tax deductions resulting from the employee exercise of increasing quantities of non-qualified stock options at substantial gains. Enormous tax losses reported by employee stock option granting firms were sufficient to eliminate not only current US corporate income tax liabilities but also several years of future tax liabilities for some firms. Previous research has documented an increasing proportion of US multinational corporate income recognized in foreign jurisdictions, thereby escaping the relatively high US corporate tax rates until the foreign profits are repatriated back into the US. Perhaps US corporate income tax rates are so high in comparison to equally suitable substitute foreign locations that many firms have relocated their income producing activities to lower taxed jurisdictions abroad. Or it may be that US multinational firms engage in various cross border income shifting techniques to avoid high US corporate income tax rates and reduce their overall global tax burden. Profitable option intensive firms in the late 1990's faced in effect lower US corporate income tax rates due to their extensive employee stock option deductions and resulting net operating loss carry-forwards. It is possible that these firms had more incentive to recognize income domestically than their non-option intensive corporate peers. Using a sample of the largest US firms comprising the NASDAQ-100 index on May 31, 2001, this study found evidence of higher US profitability among NASDAQ-100 multinational firms with the largest deductions resulting from the exercise of options by their employees during the 1997 - 2000 fiscal years suggesting that these firms where more likely to recognize or even generate income within US borders when facing effectively lower US corporate income tax rates. Such an observation has potential public policy implications and contributes to the literature on tax motivated income shifting behavior.