Corporate income tax, legal form of organization, and employment

Chen, Daphne; Qi, Shi; Schlagenhauf, Don E.

Working Paper

Corporate income tax, legal form of organization, and employment

Abstract: We adopt a dynamic stochastic occupational choice model with heterogeneous agents and evaluate the impact of a potential reduction in the corporate income tax on employment. We show that a reduction in corporate income tax leads to moderate job creation. In the extreme case, the elimination of the corporate income tax would reduce the non-employed population by 5.4 percent. In the model, a reduction in the corporate income tax creates jobs through two channels, one from new entry firms and one from existing firms changing their form of legal organization. In particular, the latter accounts for 85.7 percent of the new jobs created.

Keywords: Corporate Income Taxes; Employment; Firm heterogeneity; Entrepreneurs;

JEL Classification: C54; E10; E69; H25; H32;