2000, Eggert, Wolfgang, Genser, Bernd

It is a widely acknowledged result of the literature on capital tax competition that underprovision of public goods can only be avoided if tax coordination between governments is intensive and residence-based capital taxation can be enforced. In this paper we use a model where commodity and factor taxes are available and we show that governments competing for tax bases will choose a globally efficient tax structure. In contrast to previous conclusions, we also show that the availability of a destination-based commodity tax or a labor tax is necessary to mitigate the problem of inefficient Nash equilibria and thus reduces the necessity of supranational tax harmonization or coordination.

1999, Eggert, Wolfgang

Models of international tax competition typically assume the existence of a benevolent government. This paper presents a model which integrates the view of government as source of inefficiency with an analysis of distorting taxes on capital investment, savings and labor income in a common theoretical framework. The model yields the conclusion that the effects of international tax coordination on the welfare of residents can be ambiguous because the costs of inefficient public good supply are lowered but wasteful government consumption increased. However, the above finding is derived when the residence-based capital tax is not available. In contrast, government use of taxes clearly is inefficient from the viewpoint of residents in the presence of residence-based capital taxation.

1999, Eggert, Wolfgang

This paper analyzes the impact of tax competition between two countries of un- equal per-capita capital endowments on tax rates and efficiency when distorting wage, residence-based and source-based capital taxes (o any combination of two instruments) are available for governments. The national welfare costs and benefits of tax rate varia- tions are shown to be ambiguous in the asymmetric Nash equilibrium due to the existence of tax base and terms of trade effects. Moreover,numerical simulation results indicate that non-cooperative equilibria in Nash strategies are inefficient from an international perspective, even if residence-based capital taxes are in the set of tax instruments avail- able to fiscal authorities.