Taxing Corporate Income in the 21st Century

Alan J. Auerbach is Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law, Director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance, and former Chair of the Economics Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania before moving to California. Professor Auerbach is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and was Deputy Chief of Staff on the U.S. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation in 1992. He has served as a member of the Executive Committee and as Vice President of the American Economic Association, and is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Auerbach is a member of the Advisory Committee, Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce, the Revenue Estimating Review Panel of the U.S. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation, and the Board of Academic Advisors of the International Tax Policy Forum. He is the editor or co-editor of ten books, and author or co-author of three books. James R. Hines Jr. is Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan, Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, and Research Director of the Office of Tax Policy Research at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He taught at Princeton and at Harvard before moving to Michigan in 1997. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and was previously an economist in the United States Department of Commerce. Professor Hines is a Research Fellow with the CESifo Research Network in Munich, Germany, and Research Director of the International Tax Policy Forum. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, second edition, Journal of Regional Science, B.E. Journals in Economic Analysis and Policy, and the Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money. Joel Slemrod is the Paul W. McCracken Collegiate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and also serves as Director of the Office of Tax Policy Research, an interdisciplinary research center housed at the Ross School. Professor Slemrod was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution and in 1984-85 was the senior staff economist for tax policy at the President's Council of Economic Advisers. He has also been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Treasury, the Canadian Department of Finance, the New Zealand Department of Treasury, the South African Ministry of Finance, the World Bank, and the OECD. He is a member of the Joint Committee on Taxation Revenue Estimating Board and has testified before the Congress on domestic and international taxation issues. From 1992 to 1998 Professor Slemrod was editor of the National Tax Journal. He is the editor or co-editor of ten books, and is co-author with Jon Bakija of Taxing Ourselves: A Citizen's Guide to the Debate over Taxes, now in its third edition.

“In this book most of the top stars of public finance economics grapple with a series of issues surrounding the taxation of corporate income. These include, among others, the reactions of corporations to changes in the corporate tax rate, tha reactions of the market to changes in the tax on dividends, and the efforts of corporations ( by choosing their location, by their debt-finance decisions, and by other means) to reduce their tax liabilities. The authors do not reach a clear consensus, but expose the reader to the many facets (of theory, of hypothesis framing and testing, and of data analysis) that turn out to be important as one delves into this topic. These matters are profound, rich and challenging to professionals interested in public finance and corporate behavior.” -- Arnold C. Harberger, University of California, Los Angeles

• Contributors; Preface; 1. The effect of taxes on market responses to dividend announcements and payments: what can we learn from the 2003 dividend tax cut? Raj Chetty, Joseph Rosenberg and Emmanuel Saez; Comments Gustavo Grullon; Comments Douglas J. Skinner; 2. Dissecting dividend decisions: some clues about the effects of dividend taxation from recent UK reforms Stephen R. Bond, Michael P. Devereux and Alexander Klemm; Comments Roger Gordon; Comments James Poterba; 3. The 2003 dividend tax cuts and the value of the firm: an event study Alan J. Auerbach and Kevin A. Hassett; Comments William G. Gale; Comments George R. Zodrow; 4. How elastic is the corporate income tax base? Jonathan Gruber and Joshua Rauh; Comments Jane Gravelle; Comments Casey B. Mulligan; 5. An empirical examination of corporate tax noncompliance Michelle Hanlon, Lillian Mills and Joel Slemrod; Comments Joseph Bankman; Comments Brian Erard; 6. On the extent, growth, and efficiency consequences of state business tax planning Donald Bruce, John Deskins and William F. Fox; Comments William M. Gentry; Comments Charles E. McLure, Jr; 7. Corporate taxation and international competition James R. Hines Jr; Comments Jack M. Mintz; Comments John Douglas Wilson; 8. The changing role of auditors in corporate tax planning Edward L. Maydew and Douglas A. Shackelford; Comments Steven N. Kaplan; Comments Richard Sansing; 9. Taxation and the evolution of aggregate corporate ownership concentration Mihir A. Desai, Dhammika Dharmapala and Winnie Fung; Comments Jeffrey R. Brown; Comments Jeff Strnad; Index.