Mobility Responses to the Establishment of a Residential Tax Haven: Evidence From Switzerland
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2021-10-09
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Working Paper
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Abstract
I analyze mobility responses to a tax reform that established the Swiss canton of Obwalden as a tax haven in 2006. The reform, which included a regressive income tax schedule, was explicitly aimed at attracting the top 1%. Difference-in-Differences (DiD) estimations comparing Obwalden to all other cantons confirm that the reform successfully attracted rich taxpayers: by 2016, the share of rich in the canton had more than doubled, and average income per taxpayer was 16% higher relative to 2005. Using individual tax return data, I find a large elasticity of the stock of rich taxpayers of 1.5–2 with respect to the net-of- average-tax rate. The corresponding flow elasticity is 7.2. To address potential endogeneity, I use a DiD approach to instrument the tax rate changes caused by the reform. Despite the large behavioral responses, the reform did not increase revenue per capita in the canton. Finally, I find small positive effects on local employment. However, rich in- movers were not more likely to also work in the canton, and I cannot rule out that employment effects were driven by the simultaneous reduction in corporate income taxes.
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(16627)
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Center of Economic Research at ETH Zurich
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Subject
Personal income tax; local taxes; Tax Competition; regressive income tax
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03716 - Sturm, Jan-Egbert / Sturm, Jan-Egbert
02525 - KOF Konjunkturforschungsstelle / KOF Swiss Economic Institute
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