Taxation, R&D tax incentives and patent application in Europe

Arbeitspapier

The focus of this paper is on effects from tax incentives for research and development inputs (R&D) and corporate income tax on business R&D and patenting behaviour. First, we provide a theoretical discussion of tax planning with R&D and intellectual property (IP) ownership. Further, we employ firm-specific micro-data on patent applications of European corporations at the European Patent Office to test reactions on changes in R&D tax incentives and corporate tax burden. We find a positive impact of R&D tax incentives and a negative impact of the statutory corporate income tax rate on patenting. R&D incentives rather influence the tendency to invest in R&D, whereas the tax burden rather influences the scale of R&D investment and the count of patent applications.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ZEW Discussion Papers ; No. 11-024

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Business Taxes and Subsidies including sales and value-added (VAT) ; Tax Evasion and Avoidance ; Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights: General
• Subject: Patent ; R&D ; Tax Incentives ; Taxation

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Ernst, Christof ; Spengel, Christoph
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW)
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2011

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/44983
• URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:180-madoc-31691
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET