How Taxation Affects Foreign Direct Investment

Tax incentives neither make up for serious deficiencies in a country's investment environment nor generate the desired externalities. But when other factors, such as infrastructure, transport costs, and political and economic stability are more or less equal, the taxes in one location may have a significant effect on investors' choices. This effect varies, however, depending on the tax instrument used, the characteristics of the multinational company, and the relationship between the tax systems of the home and recipient countries.

This publication reports the results of a project examining taxation and foreign direct investment (FDI).

This paper identifies tax factors in 21 developing countries that have an impact on foreign direct investment flows. It categorizes those factors into issues associated with tax coordination; tax rates and rate structures; and composition of the tax base. Recent actions by countries reveal no clear pattern in their attempts to increase tax coordination, while many have reduced corporate tax rates and stream-lined tax incentives. However, broad-based tax reform is lacking in most, leaving room for further possibilities in tax reform for attracting foreign investment. The paper also addresses nontax factors that can be instrumental in attracting foreign investment.

Each national report addresses, among other things, the following issues: - the sources of law and general principle of the law of evidence - the means of evidence - the role of the judge and the parties in the evidence procedure - the evaluation of evidence - the production of evidence - the registration of produced evidence - the possibilities to admit new evidence or to renew evidence in appeal proceedings.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 1,3, University of Duisburg-Essen (Mercator School of Management), course: Internationalisierung von Unternehmen, language: English, abstract: Foreign direct investment has often been of great importance for developing countries and countries in transition. These countries develop various strategies to attract FDI, one of which includes the taxation attractiveness. This paper deals with the impact of international taxation on investment location choice of multinational firms. General aspects of taxation of the FDI destination country and the source country are looked close upon. Such general tax factors like corporate income tax rate, indirect taxes and tax law transparency, as well as tax incentives and taxation in the investor’s home country, play an important role for a multinational’s investment location decision, especially for the decision of footloose industries like export-oriented firms or manufacturing companies. Further, bilateral tax treaties including provisions of foreign tax credits, exemptions and tax savings affect the investor’s tax planning, since they may alleviate or completely eliminate the problem of double taxation. Tax avoidance is also an important factor described in the paper. High tax rates, tax incentives and tax treaties may encourage multinational firms to use tax avoidance strategies in order to qualify for tax incentives or extend received ones, or to carry out profit reallocations.

This book describes the many different ways in which national tax rules and international tax principles affect foreign direct investment decisions, and examines their impact on the establishment and operation of foreign-invested projects. It focuses on tax provisions in both host and home countries, and looks at the role of tax treaties, the methods of relieving double taxation and of countering tax avoidance.

Over the past twenty years, foreign direct investments have spurred widespread liberalization of the foreign direct investment (FDI) regulatory framework. By opening up to foreign investors and encouraging FDI, which could result in increased capital and market access, many countries have improved the operational conditions for foreign affiliates and strengthened standards of treatment and protection. By assuring investors that their investment will be legally protected with closed bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and double taxation treaties (DTTs), this in turn creates greater interest in FDI.