Business Commons^™

Implicit Taxes In Imperfect Markets, Hannah Elizabeth Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

Implicit taxes are defined as the pre-tax rate of return disadvantage earned on an investment that is taxed preferentially. Implicit tax theory predicts that implicit taxes will fully offset any benefit from preferential tax treatment leading to no benefit from lower explicit taxes; however, implicit tax theory assumes perfect market competition. This paper relaxes the assumption of perfect market competition and finds that firms in industries with lower competition bear lower implicit taxes, and firms in industries with higher competition bear higher implicit taxes. These findings are consistent with firms in industries with less competition having price setting power. Further, …