Corporate Taxes and Internal Borrowing within Multinational Firms

62 Pages Posted: 22 Sep 2012 Last revised: 27 Apr 2023

See all articles by Peter H. Egger

Peter H. Egger

Ifo Institute for Economic Research - International Trade and Foreign Direct Investment; ETH Zürich; Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research)

Christian Keuschnigg

University of St. Gallen – Department of Economics (FGN-HSG); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); Swiss Finance Institute

Valeria Merlo

University of Tuebingen

Georg Wamser

University of Tuebingen; ETH Zurich

Date Written: September 2012

Abstract

This paper develops a theoretical model of multinational firms with an internal capital market. Main reasons for the emergence of such a market are tax avoidance through debt shifting and the existence of institutional weaknesses and financial frictions across host countries. The model serves to derive hypotheses regarding the role of local versus foreign characteristics such as profit tax rates, lack of institutional quality, financial underdevelopment, and productivity for internal debt at the level of a given foreign affiliate. The paper assesses hypotheses in a panel data-set covering the universe of German multinational firms and their internal borrowing. Numerous novel insights are gained. For instance, the tax-sensitivity found in this paper is many times higher than previous research suggests. This accrues mainly to three things: the consideration of the boundedness of the internal debt ratio as a dependent variable in comparison to its treatment as an unbounded variable in most of the previous work; the coverage of all (small and large) multinationals here rather than a focus on large units in previous work; and the inclusion of endogenous characteristics in other countries multinationals are invested in (due to endogenous weights) while previous work did not consider such effects at all or assumed them to be exogenous. Moreover, local and foreign (at other locations of a given affiliate) market conditions matter more or less symmetrically and in the opposite direction. There is a nonlinear trade-off between institutional quality or financial development on the one hand and higher profit tax rates on the other hand, and the strength of this trade-off depends on the characteristics of one location relative to the other ones a multinational firm has affiliates (or the headquarters) in.

Suggested Citation

Egger, Peter H. and Keuschnigg, Christian and Merlo, Valeria and Wamser, Georg and Wamser, Georg, Corporate Taxes and Internal Borrowing within Multinational Firms (September 2012). NBER Working Paper No. w18415, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2150546

Peter H. Egger (Contact Author)

Ifo Institute for Economic Research - International Trade and Foreign Direct Investment ( email )

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Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich

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CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research)

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Christian Keuschnigg

University of St. Gallen – Department of Economics (FGN-HSG) ( email )

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St. Gallen, 9000
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CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

Swiss Finance Institute ( email )

c/o University of Geneva
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CH-1211 Geneva 4
Switzerland

Valeria Merlo

University of Tuebingen ( email )

Department of Economics
Nauklerstr. 47
Tübingen, 72074
Germany

Georg Wamser

University of Tuebingen ( email )

Wilhelmstr. 19
72074 Tuebingen, Baden Wuerttemberg 72074
Germany

ETH Zurich ( email )

Weinbergstr. 35
Zurich, 8003
Switzerland

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