Corporate Tax Rates, Allocative Efficiency, and Aggregate Productivity

This paper quantifies the impact of effective corporate tax rates on aggregate total factor productivity. Using Chilean manufacturing data, the paper documents a large dispersion in the effective tax rate faced by firms and a mass of firms facing a 0 percent tax rate. These empirical patterns are in...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dinerstein, Marcos
Other Authors: Patino Pena, Fausto
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C The World Bank 2023
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Collection: World Bank E-Library Archive - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Description
Summary:This paper quantifies the impact of effective corporate tax rates on aggregate total factor productivity. Using Chilean manufacturing data, the paper documents a large dispersion in the effective tax rate faced by firms and a mass of firms facing a 0 percent tax rate. These empirical patterns are incorporated into a standard monopolistic competition model with corporate tax rates. The paper's quantitative findings show that the TFP gains between the economy implied by the Chilean tax code of 1998-2007 and a hypothetical economy without effective corporate tax rate inefficiencies are between 4 and 11 percent. The paper considers counterfactual policies in which all firms face the same tax rate and finds a monotonically decreasing relationship between the level of the tax rate and total factor productivity
Physical Description:46 pages