Essays on the Effects of Corporate Taxation

This thesis is a collection of three papers in macroeconomics and public finance. It develops Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Models with a special focus on financial frictions to analyze the effects of changes in corporate tax policy on firm level and macroeconomic aggregates. Chapter 1 develops a dynamic general equilibrium model with a representative firm to assess the short-run effects of changes in the timing of corporate profit taxes. First, it extends the Ricardian equivalence result to an environment with production and establishes that a temporary corporate profit tax cut financed by future tax-increase has no real effect when the tax is lump sum and capital markets are perfect. Second, I assess how strong the ricardian forces are in the presence of financing frictions. I find that when equity issuance is costly, and when the firm faces a lower bound on dividend payments, a temporary tax cut reduces temporary the marginal cost of investment and implies positive marginal propensity of investment.  Third, I analyze how do the intertemporal substitution effects of tax cuts interact with the stimulative effects when tax is not lump-sum. The results show that when tax is proportional to corporate profit, the expectations of high future tax rates reduce the expected marginal return on investment and mitigate the stimulative effects of tax cuts. The net investment response depends on the relative strength of each effect. Chapter 2 is co-authored with Rui Castro. In this paper, we quantify how effective temporary corporate tax cuts are in stimulating investment and output via relaxation of financing frictions. In fact, policymakers often rely on temporary corporate tax cuts in order to provide incentives for business investment in recession times. A common motivation is that such policies help relax financing frictions, which might bind more during recessions. We assess whether this mechanism is effective. In an industry equilibrium model where some firms are financially constrained, marginal propensities to invest are high. We consider a transitory corporate tax cut, funded by public debt. By increasing current cash flows, corporate tax cuts are effective at stimulating current investment. On impact, aggregate investment increases by 26 cents per dollar of tax stimulus, and aggregate output by 3.5 cents. The stimulative output effects are long-lived, extending past the period the policy is reversed, leading to a cumulative effect multiplier on output of 7.2 cents. A major factor preventing larger effects is that this policy tends to significantly crowd out investment among the larger, unconstrained firms. Chapter 3 studies the effects of the 1992's U.S. Treasury Department proposal of a Comprehensive Business Income Tax (CBIT) reform. According to the U.S. tax code, dividend and capital gain are taxed at the firm level and further taxed when distributed to shareholders. This double taxation may reduce the overall return on investment and  induce inefficient capital allocation. Therefore, tax reforms have been at the center of numerous debates among economists and policymakers. As part of this debate, the U.S. Department of Treasury proposed in 1992 to abolish dividend and capital gain taxes, and to use a Comprehensive Business Income Tax (CBIT) to levy tax on corporate income. In this paper, I use an industry equilibrium model where firms are subject to financing frictions, and idiosyncratic productivity and entry/exit shocks to assess the long run effects of the CBIT. I find that the elimination of the capital gain and dividend taxes is not self financing. More precisely, the corporate profit tax rate should be increased from 34\% to 42\% to keep the reform revenue-neutral. Overall, the results show that the CBIT reform reduces capital accumulation and output by 8\% and 1\%, respectively. However, it  improves capital allocation by 20\%, resulting in an increase in aggregate productivity by 1.41\% and in a modest welfare gain.

Keyphrases: Firm heterogeneity, Financing frictions, Corporate Tax Policy, Corporate tax reform, Finance regime, Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium, Investment Dynamics, Ricardian equivalence, Transitional Dynamics, Tax Cut Multipliers