Wages and International Tax Competition

Sebastian Krautheim, Tim Schmidt-Eisenlohr

2016

We introduce wage bargaining and private information into a model of profit shifting and tax competition between a large and a small country. Shifting profits to the small country not only reduces a firm's tax bill but also creates private information on profitability, altering the wage bargaining in favor of the firm. This additional shifting incentive makes the tax base of the large country more elastic and leads to higher outflows, lower wages, higher firm profits and lower equilibrium tax rates. Tax rates are no longer the only determinant of the direction and extent of profit shifting.

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University of Passau