Corporate Taxation and Location of Intangible Assets: Patents vs. Trademarks

33 Pages Posted: 24 Mar 2016

See all articles by Olena Dudar

Olena Dudar

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Johannes Voget

University of Mannheim

Date Written: March 23, 2016

Abstract

Numerous empirical studies have analysed the influence of corporate taxation on the location of intangible assets within a company group. However, the previous literature has rather focused on studying the impact of taxation on patent location choices assuming that these assets represent the rest of intangibles as well. This paper complements previous studies by estimating and comparing the tax elasticities of two different types of intangibles – patents and trademarks. We employ data on European and US patent and trademark applications in the period of 1996-2012 and estimate a multinomial logit model that incorporates various observed and unobserved factors of the intangible’s location choice. According to our main findings, trademarks are more sensitive to changes in taxation as compared to patents. This implies that firms use trademarks more eagerly for tax planning purposes than patents.

Keywords: intangible assets; patent; trademark; tax planning; corporate taxation

JEL Classification: H25, F23, H26, H3

Suggested Citation

Dudar, Olena and Voget, Johannes, Corporate Taxation and Location of Intangible Assets: Patents vs. Trademarks (March 23, 2016). ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper No. 16-015, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2753656 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2753656

Olena Dudar (Contact Author)

ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research ( email )

P.O. Box 10 34 43
L 7,1
D-68034 Mannheim, 68034
Germany

Johannes Voget

University of Mannheim ( email )

L 7, 3-5
Mannheim, 68161
Germany

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