Corporate Tax Planning and Industry Concentration

Abstract

Recent research has documented that industry concentration has increased significantly over the past 25 years, with potentially negative consequences for competition, productivity, and social welfare. Some have suggested that greater corporate tax planning by industry leaders, which can provide them with a cost advantage over their competitors, has contributed to this trend. As a result, policymakers are targeting such tax planning to reduce industry concentration. We provide large-sample empirical evidence on whether tax planning is associated with industry concentration. In contrast with conventional wisdom, we find that industry leaders generally do not exhibit greater tax planning relative to their closest competitors. Furthermore, industry leader tax planning advantages do not meaningfully explain the trend in industry concentration over our sample period. Finally, we document that industries with plausibly tax planning-induced concentration do not exhibit different aggregate productivity growth than other industries. In short, our findings cast doubt on the idea that corporate tax planning is responsible for increasing industry concentration or other anti-competition industry-level outcomes in recent years.

Keywords: Tax planning, industry concentration, competition, productivity

JEL Classification: D40, H25, M40, M41