The effective tax burden of companies in Europe

Company taxation is commonly accepted as a rele-vant location factor. In this context the measurement and the international comparison of the effective tax burden indicates differences in the attractiveness of locations. This study compares the effective tax bur-den of companies based on a measure which reflects the impact of company taxation on decisions and in particular on location choices. The calculations were carried out at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and are based on an approach which was introduced by Devereux and Griffith (1999). This approach is useful for analysing the im-pact of taxation on investment decisions. Moreover, profit-shifting strategies can also be integrated. A more detailed study based on the same approac