Recent empirical findings suggest that firms might not always engage in economically optimal tax planning. We conduct a series of four laboratory experiments with 223 students and 62 tax professionals to examine whether decision biases offer a behavioral explanation for tax outcomes. We find that individuals overestimate the importance of tax rates relative to the tax base when facing time pressure in tax-planning decisions. This systematic decision bias results in suboptimal choices. In line with the theory of rational inattention, we observe that increasing tax-burden differences between two tax-planning strategies weakly mitigate the decision bias. However, tax-planning behavior is unaffected by the level of experience: students and highly experienced tax professionals are similarly prone to biased decision-making. Overall, our findings suggest that overestimating the implications of salient tax-rate information can cause decision biases and contribute to heterogeneity in tax outcomes. / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

In the history of economic thoughts the problem of a "just" tax rate structure has played an important role. The paper reconsiders the discussions of the last two centuries and sheds additional light on the concrete tax schedules using the more recent methods of tax theory. Even if the substitution effects which play an important role in the theory of optimal taxation are neglected, the slope in the diminishing marginal utility of income causes tax rate structures reaching from accelerated progression to delayed regression. Interestingly the principle of equal relative sacrifice combined with a Bernoulli utility function yields a delayed progression, which is connected with a negative income tax.

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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.

This study analyzes the relation between accounting conservatism, future tax rate cuts and countries' level of book-tax conformity. Firms have an incentive to increase conservatism in financial reporting when a tax rate cut is imminent to shift taxable income into the lower taxed future. Using a panel of firms across 18 countries from 1995 to 2010 I find that conditional conservatism is positively and significantly associated with future tax rate cuts when book-tax conformity is high. This effect is particularly pronounced for firms that concentrate the majority of their operations in the country in which the tax rate is cut. In contrast, there is no significant relation between future tax rate cuts and unconditional conservatism. / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

In this research, I present the analysis of the relationship between credit rating and tax avoidance. I found out that the lower the cash effective tax rate the stronger the association with credit rating. Sensitivity analysis showed that the probability of falling into more favorable credit rating category is increases and the probability of falling into less favorable category decreases if cash effective tax rate increases at least by 1%. Also, the negative association between book-tax differences and credit rating found.

This diploma thesis deals with taxation of financial institutions with focus on banking sector in the Czech Republic. The aim is to analyze effective tax rate of the Czech banks, define issues that might have influenced the evolution of the effective tax rate and make comparison with effective tax rate of other Czech corporations and European banks. The first chapter characterizes financial institutions, development of taxation of the financial sector and briefly describes the global financial crises. In the next chapter specifics of the value added tax and corporate income tax are described from the point of view of the financial institutions according to the Czech law followed by description of the financial transactions tax and financial activities tax. In the third chapter is analyzed effective tax rate of the Czech banks for period from 2007 to 2014 based on data gained from annual reports of the analyzed banks. Data for comparison of the effective rates of Czech and European banks were gained from the database S&P Capital IQ. In the conclusion of the thesis are analyzed reasons that might have caused changes in the effective tax rate in the banking sector.

The diploma thesis deals with the tax system of Sweden. The object of this thesis is to describe a tax system which differs from the other countries of the European Union. The bulk of this thesis is the analysis of the development of Swedish tax system in dependence on economic and political situation of the country, the introduction of actual tax conditions and current changes relating to the taxation originating in the economic development of the country, progressive European integration and also in the worldwide financial crisis. Furthermore, this work compares basic tax indicators within Sweden and other states of the European Union. On the basis of such a diploma thesis, the reader should acquire a complex insight into the character and specifics of the Swedish tax system.

The aim of my diploma work is to present advantages of a flat tax system and compare its level of justice with progressive taxation system.In the first part I want to start with theoretical background and general economic mindset to the problem. The second part describes the real impact of the adoption of the system on public finance, a frequent subject of controversy, focusing on the economic environment of Slovakia and Czech republic. I will work with the official data from Czech Statistical Office using graphs and tables to show the trend of the general budget revenue before and after the adoption and the final impact on the general tax revenue. Adopting the system in 2008 and confronting the general tax revenue dropout during the financial crisis, the Czech data may not testify sufficiently. However, the flat tax adoption in Slovakia dated back in 2004 gives us four more years of statistics, which may adequately demonstrate what Czech numbers can't. The conclusion summarizes the total influence of the flat tax rate system on the economies of Czech republic and Slovakia

This work deals with tax wedges (effective tax rates) for businesses in the Czech Republic. The goal is to use a methodology for measuring the tax wedges for analysis of tax burden on particular business in period 2004 to 2008. Effective tax rate particular firm is compared with the effective tax rates of enterprises in the Czech Republic and the European Union. To achieve that goal literature review, analysis and comparison method are used. The results of the analysis showed that the particular firm had at the beginning of the period a very high tax burden compared to the statutory tax rate. During the period, however, the effective tax rate of the company significantly reduced and thereby was closer to statutory tax rate. The company had a lot of nondeductible expenses which most significantly contributed to the high tax burden. Tax on corporate income for companies is included in the costs, so the company should try to minimize this expense and thereby reduce the effective tax rate.