Amid growing globalization, many countries have offered tax incentives to attract corporate investment. Prior research studies the role such incentives play in firms’ location and investment choices. However, we have limited evidence on the role that uncertainty about the intensity of future tax enforcement plays in those decisions. In 2013, the European Commission (“E.C.”) abruptly began investigating tax ruling practices of several countries in response to allegations that certain firms received preferential tax treatment (“state aid cases”). We use this setting to study the economic consequences of increased uncertainty about future tax enforcement. We find evidence consistent with significant reductions in U.S. multinational enterprises’ subsidiary investments within, firm input purchases from, and aggregate investment of U.S. firms flowing to targeted state aid countries. Specifically, for U.S. multinational enterprises’ subsidiary investments we find fixed assets declined by 1.7 percent of total assets, or $7.6 million per subsidiary.

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超越国界：超政府税收执法和企业投资的不确定性

在日益全球化的背景下，许多国家提供税收优惠以吸引企业投资。先前的研究研究了这种激励措施在公司选址和投资选择中的作用。然而，关于未来税收执法强度的不确定性在这些决定中所起的作用，我们的证据有限。2013 年，欧盟委员会 (“EC”) 突然开始调查多个国家的税收裁决做法，以回应有关某些公司获得税收优惠待遇的指控（“国家援助案件”）。我们使用此设置来研究未来税收执法不确定性增加的经济后果。我们发现证据表明美国跨国企业在美国的子公司投资、从美国购买的企业投入和总投资显着减少 流向目标国家援助国家的公司。具体而言，对于美国跨国企业的子公司投资，我们发现固定资产下降了 1.7% 的总资产，即每个子公司 760 万美元。