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Business and Economics > Corporate Taxation

You are looking at 1 - 2 of 2 items for :

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Cover IMF Working Papers
Taxation and Leverage in International Banking
Ms. Grace Weishi Gu
,
Ruud A. de Mooij
, and
Mr. Tigran Poghosyan
This paper explores how corporate taxes affect the financial structure of multinational banks. Guided by a simple theory of optimal capital structure it tests (i) whether corporate taxes induce subsidiary banks to raise their debt-asset ratio in light of the traditional debt bias; and (ii) whether international corporate tax differentials vis-a-vis foreign subsidiary banks affect the intra-bank capital structure through international debt shifting. Using a novel subsidiary-level dataset for 558 commercial bank subsidiaries of the 86 largest multinational banks in the world, we find that taxes matter significantly, through both the traditional debt bias channel and the international debt shifting that is due to the international tax differentials. The latter channel is more robust and tends to be quantitatively more important. Our results imply that taxation causes significant international debt spillovers through multinational banks, which has potentially important implications for tax policy.
Keywords:
WP; short-term debt; tax credit; debt ratio; banking sector; parent bank; Bank taxation; corporate tax; debt bias; leverage; subsidiary bank; tax difference; capital requirement; bank leverage; Corporate income tax; Deposit insurance; Tax allowances; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Debt, Taxes, and Banks
Mr. Michael Keen
and
Ruud A. de Mooij
Understanding the impact of the asymmetric tax treatment of debt and equity on the capital structures of financial institutions is critical to shaping and assessing responses to the problem of excessive leverage that underlay the 2009 financial crisis - but there is no empirical evidence to draw on. Guided by a simple model of banks? financing decisions in the presence of both regulatory constraints and tax asymmetries, this paper explores the impact of corporate tax bias on bank leverage, the use of hybrid instruments and regulatory capital ratios for a panel of over 14,000 commercial banks in 82 countries over nine years. On average, the sensitivity of banks? debt choices proves very similar to that of non-financial firms, consistent with rough offsetting of two opposing effects suggested by the theory. As the model predicts, somewhat counter-intuitively, the impact of tax on hybrids is generally weak or insignificant. Responsiveness to taxation varies significantly across banks, however: those holding smaller equity buffers, and larger banks, are noticeably less sensitive to tax.
Keywords:
WP; capital structure; tax rate; Bank taxation; corporate tax; debt bias; leverage; capital requirement; leverage-asset ratio; bank assets; capital structure choice; bank capital structure; Corporate income tax; Capital adequacy requirements; Stocks; Deposit insurance; Tax arrears management; Europe