Capital Mobility and Capital Tax Competition

This paper surveys the literatures on two questions that are essential to the discussion of mobility and taxation that is the focus of this special issue of the National Tax Journal. First, it examines the extent to which capital is mobile internationally, focusing on empirical evidence on the tax sensitivity of foreign investment, the incidence of the corporate income tax, and savings-investment correlations. Second, it considers the extent to which the mobility of capital has resulted in interjurisdictional capital tax competition, drawing on the theoretical tax competition literature, empirical evidence on corporate income tax rates, the strategic tax competition literature, and the relatively new literature examining interjurisdictional competition in the form of allowing tax avoidance.