IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/wptemi/td_1291_20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An economic assessment of the evolution of the corporate tax system in Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Ernesto Zangari

    (Bank of Italy)

Abstract

This paper provides an assessment of the evolution of the Italian corporate tax system over the last decade through the computations of new and updated effective tax rates. The analysis takes into account the specificities of Italy’s Allowance for Corporate Equity (ACE) and looks at the evolution of market interest rates to evaluate the effects. It relies on a new method to measure the effect of the limits to the deductibility of the cost of debt. Over the period 2010-2020, the legislative changes led to effective taxation becoming highly volatile. This dynamic was mostly driven by the evolution of the ACE regime. Since 2016, the temporary tax incentives for purchasing machinery greatly reduced the cost of capital. However, since 2019 the provision that phased out the incentives at higher-levels of investment may have lowered their effectiveness for larger firms. The analysis also shows that ACE has better economic properties than the Mini-Ires regime that replaced it temporarily in 2019, in terms of incentive to invest and to increase equity funding.

Suggested Citation

  • Ernesto Zangari, 2020. "An economic assessment of the evolution of the corporate tax system in Italy," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1291, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1291_20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/temi-discussione/2020/2020-1291/en_tema_1291.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Devereux, Michael P & Griffith, Rachel, 2003. "Evaluating Tax Policy for Location Decisions," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 10(2), pages 107-126, March.
    2. Giorgia Maffini & Jing Xing & Michael P. Devereux, 2019. "The Impact of Investment Incentives: Evidence from UK Corporation Tax Returns," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 361-389, August.
    3. Peter Egger & Simon Loretz, 2010. "Homogeneous Profit Tax Effects for Heterogeneous Firms?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(8), pages 1023-1041, August.
    4. Michael Devereux, 2003. "Measuring taxes on income from capital," IFS Working Papers W03/04, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    5. Hebous, Shafik & Ruf, Martin, 2017. "Evaluating the effects of ACE systems on multinational debt financing and investment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 131-149.
    6. Raj Chetty & Emmanuel Saez, 2010. "Dividend and Corporate Taxation in an Agency Model of the Firm," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 1-31, August.
    7. Mervyn A. King & Don Fullerton, 1984. "The United Kingdom," NBER Chapters, in: The Taxation of Income from Capital: A Comparative Study of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany, pages 31-86, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Giordano, Claire & Marinucci, Marco & Silvestrini, Andrea, 2019. "The macro determinants of firms' and households' investment: Evidence from Italy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 118-133.
    9. Peter Egger & Simon Loretz & Michael Pfaffermayr & Hannes Winner, 2009. "Firm-specific forward-looking effective tax rates," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 16(6), pages 850-870, December.
    10. Eric Ohrn, 2018. "The Effect of Corporate Taxation on Investment and Financial Policy: Evidence from the DPAD," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 272-301, May.
    11. Bond, Stephen & Xing, Jing, 2015. "Corporate taxation and capital accumulation: Evidence from sectoral panel data for 14 OECD countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 15-31.
    12. Shafik Hebous & Alexander Klemm, 2020. "A destination-based allowance for corporate equity," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 27(3), pages 753-777, June.
    13. Daniela Federici & Valentino Parisi & Caroline Elliott, 2015. "Do corporate taxes reduce investments? Evidence from Italian firm-level panel data," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1012435-101, December.
    14. Mervyn A. King & Don Fullerton, 1984. "The United States," NBER Chapters, in: The Taxation of Income from Capital: A Comparative Study of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany, pages 193-267, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Kari, Seppo & Laitila, Jussi & Ropponen, Olli, 2018. "Investment Incentives and Tax Competition under the Allowance for Growth and Investment (AGI)," Working Papers 110, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    16. Ruud A. de Mooij, 2011. "The Tax Elasticity of Corporate Debt: A Synthesis of Size and Variations," IMF Working Papers 2011/095, International Monetary Fund.
    17. Massimo Bordignon & Silvia Giannini & Paolo Panteghini, 2001. "Reforming Business Taxation: Lessons from Italy?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 8(2), pages 191-210, March.
    18. Koethenbuerger, Marko & Stimmelmayr, Michael, 2014. "Corporate deductibility provisions and managerial incentives," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 120-130.
    19. Mervyn A. King & Don Fullerton, 1984. "The Taxation of Income from Capital: A Comparative Study of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number king84-1.
    20. Krister Andersson & Vesa Kanniainen & Jan Södersten & Peter Birch Sørensen, 1998. "Corporate Tax Policy in the Nordic Countries," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Peter Birch Sørensen (ed.), Tax Policy in the Nordic Countries, chapter 3, pages 72-137, Palgrave Macmillan.
    21. Edgerton, Jesse, 2010. "Investment incentives and corporate tax asymmetries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 936-952, December.
    22. Mervyn A. King & Don Fullerton, 1984. "Introduction to "The Taxation of Income from Capital: A Comparative Study of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany"," NBER Chapters, in: The Taxation of Income from Capital: A Comparative Study of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany, pages 1-6, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    23. Christian Keuschnigg & Evelyn Ribi, 2013. "Profit taxes and financing constraints," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 20(5), pages 808-826, October.
    24. Manuel Bonucchi & Monica Ferrari & Stefania Tomasini & Tsvetomira Tsenova, 2015. "Tax policy, investment decisions and economic growth," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(5), pages 225-262.
    25. Ohrn, Eric, 2019. "The effect of tax incentives on U.S. manufacturing: Evidence from state accelerated depreciation policies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chiara Bellucci & Silvia Carta & Sara De Tollis & Federica Di Giacomo & Marco Manzo & Daniela Bucci & Donato Curto & Fabrizio De Grandis & Francesca Sica, 2023. "A Corporate Income Tax Microsimulation Model for Italy," Working Papers wp2023-17, Ministry of Economy and Finance, Department of Finance.
    2. Michael Funke & Raphael Terasa, 2022. "Temporary Super Depreciation Allowances for Green and Digital Investments," CESifo Working Paper Series 9838, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ligia Alba Melo-Becerra & Javier Ávila Mahecha & Jorge Enrique Ramos-Forero, 2017. "The Effect of Corporate Taxes on Investment: Evidence from the Colombian Firms," IHEID Working Papers 10-2017, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    2. Sean Mc Auliffe & Georg U. Thunecke & Georg Wamser, 2023. "The Tax-Elasticity of Tangible Fixed Assets: Evidence from Novel Corporate Tax Data," CESifo Working Paper Series 10628, CESifo.
    3. Elias Steinmüller & Georg U. Thunecke & Georg Wamser, 2019. "Corporate income taxes around the world: a survey on forward-looking tax measures and two applications," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 26(2), pages 418-456, April.
    4. Desiderio Romero-Jordán & Ismael Sanz-Labrador & José Félix Sanz-Sanz, 2020. "Is the corporation tax a barrier to productivity growth?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 23-38, June.
    5. Dorota Wawrzyniak, 2013. "Opodatkowanie przedsiębiorstw jako determinanta bezpośrednich inwestycji zagranicznych w krajach Unii Europejskiej," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 3, pages 37-55.
    6. Occhino, Filippo, 2023. "The macroeconomic effects of business tax cuts with debt financing and accelerated depreciation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    7. Bilicka, Katarzyna, 2020. "Are financing constraints binding for investment? Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 618-640.
    8. Isaac Baley & Andrés Blanco, 2022. "The long-run effects of corporate tax reforms," Economics Working Papers 1813, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    9. Michael Devereux, 2003. "Measuring taxes on income from capital," IFS Working Papers W03/04, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    10. Ligia Alba Melo-Becerra & Javier Ávila Mahecha & Jorge Enrique Ramos-Forero, 2021. "Corporate Taxation and Investment: Evidence from a Context of Frequent Tax Reforms," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 237(2), pages 3-31, June.
    11. Sean Mc Auliffe & Georg U. Thunecke & Georg Wamser, 2023. "The Tax-Elasticity of Tangible Fixed Assets: Heterogeneous Effects of Homogeneous Tax Policy Changes," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2023-25, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    12. Félix Domínguez Barrero & Julio López Laborda & Fernando Rodrigo Sauco, 2005. "Do Corporate and Personal Income Taxes Affect Incorporation?," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 174(3), pages 55-86, September.
    13. Hannes Winner, 2012. "Fiscal Competition and the Composition of Public Expenditure: An Empirical Study," Contemporary Economics, University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw., vol. 6(3), September.
    14. Sanz Labrador, Ismael & Sanz-Sanz, José Félix, 2013. "Política fiscal y crecimiento económico: consideraciones microeconómicas y relaciones macroeconómicas," Macroeconomía del Desarrollo 5367, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    15. Ligia Alba Melo-Becerra & Héctor Zárate-Solano & Andrés Camilo Gómez-Molina, 2018. "Elasticidad del ingreso corporativo gravable en Colombia," Borradores de Economia 1046, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    16. Alstadsæter, Annette & Jacob, Martin & Michaely, Roni, 2017. "Do dividend taxes affect corporate investment?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 74-83.
    17. Katharina Finke & Jost H. Heckemeyer & Timo Reister & Christoph Spengel, 2013. "Impact of Tax-Rate Cut cum Base-Broadening Reforms on Heterogeneous Firms: Learning from the German Tax Reform of 2008," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 69(1), pages 72-114, March.
    18. Chang Woon Nam & Doina Radulescu & Doina Maria Radulescu, 2004. "Types of Tax Concessions for Attracting Foreign Direct Investment in Free Economic Zones," CESifo Working Paper Series 1175, CESifo.
    19. Harju, Jarkko & Koivisto, Aliisa & Matikka, Tuomas, 2022. "The effects of corporate taxes on small firms," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    20. Niklas Elert & Dan Johansson & Mikael Stenkula & Niklas Wykman, 2023. "The evolution of owner-entrepreneurs’ taxation: five tax regimes over a 160-year period," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 517-540, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    taxation; effective tax rates; corporate taxation; EMTR; allowance for corporate equity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • H32 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Firm
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1291_20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.