Consumption taxes are a primary source of tax revenue and, against the common intuition, firms might bear the respective tax burden. However, it is largely unknown how firms respond to consumption taxes. We examine whether service firms in Europe respond to consumption taxes and whether managing sales as the respective tax base is interrelated with subsequent income tax-motivated profit shifting. We exploit corporate affiliate-level panel data and a unique setting in Europe over the period 2007-2015 with 72 staggered and plausibly exogenous consumption and corporate income tax rate changes. We find that firms, on average, exhibit a negative valueadded tax-rate semi-elasticity of reported sales of around 0.5. Consistent with theory and incentives from the European value-added tax system, the effect is stronger for firms with greater discretion over the jurisdiction of value-added tax liability (firms in the digital service sector) and firms facing greater demand elasticity. We then show that the extent and the channels of profit shifting depend on firms' responsiveness to consumption taxes consistent with managing sales in response to consumption taxes placing a constraint on manipulating transfer prices for intra-group trade. Our study thereby provides novel insights for the design of multidimensional tax systems.
This article analyses the tax attractiveness of locations for investments in digital business models. It identifies and assesses relevant tax rules affecting domestic and cross-border digital business models across thirty-three countries. The computation of average effective tax rates is based on the neoclassical investment model of Devereux/Griffith. Our results help to evaluate tax-related location factors in the digital economy by combining the most relevant tax parameters and rules for taxable nexus in an objective measure. We find that investments in digital business models face generally lower average effective tax rates than those in traditional business models since a high share of investment costs is immediately expensed and a higher share of activities falls within the scope of countries’ tax incentives for R&D input and/or output. While more generous depreciation rules for digital investments such as software make countries relatively more attractive, our results are mostly driven by statutory tax rates, special incentive schemes such as Intellectual Property (IP) Boxes, R&D credits, and super-deductions. Overall, we acknowledge an increasing trend in tax competition for digital businesses.
The platform economy has generated various new and highly successful business models. However, certain models facilitate tax evasion for service providers on their income earned on these platforms. While tax evasion contradicts the pro-social claim of many sharing platforms, it is unclear whether a provider’s tax honesty constitutes a value for consumers at all. This study investigates the role of tax compliance for platform users by employing an online experiment ($$n=286$$
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). The results indicate that consumers perceive providers’ tax compliance and consider it as a trust-enhancing signal. In further analysis, we find that consumers’ moral norms moderate both the signal’s trust-building effect as well as the relation between trust and transaction intention. In light of recent policy debates around taxing the platform economy, this study provides valuable practical insights for tax legislators.
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