Abstract
Many countries have cut their corporate tax rates in the past decades to attract foreign investment. To prevent this, a global minimum tax policy was approved by OECD countries in 2021. Global changes in corporate tax rates could reshape production and investment networks while impacting welfare and global emission patterns. Here we develop a theoretical multi-country multi-industry general equilibrium model and show that global corporate tax competition during 2005–2016 would increase global carbon emissions and shift more emissions to developing economies. Implementing a global minimum tax rate of 15% would reduce global carbon emissions and effectively decrease the developing economies’ emissions. The results highlight that corporate tax policies should be coordinated with climate regulations.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72394404 to Z.Z.), the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 22CJY019 to Y.D.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71988101 to W.S., No. 72261147471 to Y.D., Nos. 71834004 and 71974141 to Z.Z.), the major program of the National Social Science Fund of China (No. 22&ZD086 to Y.D., No. 19ZDA062 to Y.C., No. 20&ZD079 to Y.L.). Special thanks to Longfei Cai and Yuan Gao from Central University of Finance and Economics in China for the excellent research assistant work.
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Y.D. and Z.Z. designed the research. Y.D. built the general equilibrium model and wrote the methods. Z.Z. created figures and drafted the initial manuscript. Y. Li. collected the raw data and revised the manuscript. S.W., C.Y. and Y. Lu. commented on the results and discussion. All authors contributed to writing the manuscript and discussed the results at all stages.
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Duan, Y., Zhang, Z., Li, Y. et al. Global corporate tax competition challenges climate change mitigation. Nat. Clim. Chang. 14, 353–356 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-01952-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-01952-0
