DP16627 Mobility Responses to the Establishment of a Residential Tax Haven: Evidence From Switzerland

Author(s):	Isabel Z. Martínez
Publication Date:	October 2021
Date Revised:	April 2022
Keyword(s):	local taxes, mobility, Personal income tax, regressive income tax, Tax Competition
JEL(s):	H24, H31, H71, H73, R23
Programme Areas:	Public Economics
Link to this Page:	cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=16627

I analyze mobility responses to a tax reform that established the Swiss canton of Obwalden as a tax haven in 2006. The reform, which included a regressive income tax schedule, was explicitly aimed at attracting the top 1%. Difference-in-Differences (DiD) estimations comparing Obwalden to all other cantons confirm that the reform successfully attracted high-income taxpayers: by 2016, the share of top earners in the canton had doubled, and average income per taxpayer was 16% higher relative to 2005. Based on individual tax return data, I estimate the mobility elasticity with a two-stage least squares (2SLS) approach, which isolates the identifying variation in the tax rate stemming from the 2006 reform only. I find a large elasticity of the stock of high-income taxpayers of 1.5â??2 with respect to the net-of- average-tax rate. The corresponding flow elasticity is 7.2. Despite these large behavioral responses, the reform did not increase revenue per capita in the canton. Finally, I find small positive effects on local employment. However, in-movers with high incomes were not more likely to also work in the canton, and I cannot rule out that employment effects were driven by the simultaneous reduction in corporate income taxes.