Not(ch) Your Average Tax System

How should developing countries tax corporate income? This paper studies this question in Costa Rica, where firms face discontinuously higher average tax rates on profits when their revenue marginally increases. The paper combines a discontinuity and a bunching design to estimate the profit elasticity and separate it into revenue and cost elasticities. Faced with higher tax rates, firms slightly reduce revenue but considerably increase costs, generating a large elasticity of profits. In this context, the revenue maximizing rate for profit taxation is below 25 percent and broadening the tax base while lowering the rate can increase revenue for these firms by 80 percent.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bachas, Pierre, Soto, Mauricio
Format: Working Paper biblioteca
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2018-07
Subjects:TAXATION, TAX ELASTICITY, TAX EVASION, CORPORATE TAX, PROFIT ELASTICITY,
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/174111531402052903/Not-ch-your-average-tax-system-corporate-taxation-under-weak-enforcement
https://hdl.handle.net/10986/29997
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spelling dig-okr-10986299972024-08-09T07:42:38Z Not(ch) Your Average Tax System Corporate Taxation under Weak Enforcement Bachas, Pierre Soto, Mauricio TAXATION TAX ELASTICITY TAX EVASION CORPORATE TAX PROFIT ELASTICITY How should developing countries tax corporate income? This paper studies this question in Costa Rica, where firms face discontinuously higher average tax rates on profits when their revenue marginally increases. The paper combines a discontinuity and a bunching design to estimate the profit elasticity and separate it into revenue and cost elasticities. Faced with higher tax rates, firms slightly reduce revenue but considerably increase costs, generating a large elasticity of profits. In this context, the revenue maximizing rate for profit taxation is below 25 percent and broadening the tax base while lowering the rate can increase revenue for these firms by 80 percent. 2018-07-16T14:44:34Z 2018-07-16T14:44:34Z 2018-07 Working Paper Document de travail Documento de trabajo http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/174111531402052903/Not-ch-your-average-tax-system-corporate-taxation-under-weak-enforcement https://hdl.handle.net/10986/29997 English Policy Research Working Paper; 8524 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank application/pdf text/plain World Bank, Washington, DC
institution Banco Mundial
collection DSpace
country Estados Unidos
countrycode US
component Bibliográfico
access En linea
databasecode dig-okr
tag biblioteca
region America del Norte
libraryname Biblioteca del Banco Mundial
language English
topic TAXATION
TAX ELASTICITY
TAX EVASION
CORPORATE TAX
PROFIT ELASTICITY
TAXATION
TAX ELASTICITY
TAX EVASION
CORPORATE TAX
PROFIT ELASTICITY
spellingShingle TAXATION
TAX ELASTICITY
TAX EVASION
CORPORATE TAX
PROFIT ELASTICITY
TAXATION
TAX ELASTICITY
TAX EVASION
CORPORATE TAX
PROFIT ELASTICITY
Bachas, Pierre
Soto, Mauricio
Not(ch) Your Average Tax System
description How should developing countries tax corporate income? This paper studies this question in Costa Rica, where firms face discontinuously higher average tax rates on profits when their revenue marginally increases. The paper combines a discontinuity and a bunching design to estimate the profit elasticity and separate it into revenue and cost elasticities. Faced with higher tax rates, firms slightly reduce revenue but considerably increase costs, generating a large elasticity of profits. In this context, the revenue maximizing rate for profit taxation is below 25 percent and broadening the tax base while lowering the rate can increase revenue for these firms by 80 percent.
format Working Paper
topic_facet TAXATION
TAX ELASTICITY
TAX EVASION
CORPORATE TAX
PROFIT ELASTICITY
author Bachas, Pierre
Soto, Mauricio
author_facet Bachas, Pierre
Soto, Mauricio
author_sort Bachas, Pierre
title Not(ch) Your Average Tax System
title_short Not(ch) Your Average Tax System
title_full Not(ch) Your Average Tax System
title_fullStr Not(ch) Your Average Tax System
title_full_unstemmed Not(ch) Your Average Tax System
title_sort not(ch) your average tax system
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2018-07
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/174111531402052903/Not-ch-your-average-tax-system-corporate-taxation-under-weak-enforcement
https://hdl.handle.net/10986/29997
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