Tax Accounting Research on Corporate Investment: A Discussion of the Impact of IP Box Regimes on the M&A Market by Bradley, Ruf, and Robinson (2021)

In The Impact of IP Box Regimes on the M&A Market, Bradley, Robinson, and Ruf (2021) study whether and to what extent tax incentives for intellectual property affect corporate M&A investment activity. The paper finds that a 1.0 percentage point tax benefit leads to a 1.2% increase in M&A activity in a country after the implementation of an Intellectual Property (IP) Box tax regime. Results vary based on country-specific IP Box requirements, as well as firm-specific characteristics such as patent ownership and acquirer nationality. My discussion offers more cautious interpretations of the empirical results related to statutory country-specific requirements of these regimes and raises concerns about the type and timing of firm responses. More generally, I outline how this paper and other work by tax researchers in Accounting contributes to the broader literature studying the relation between corporate tax policies and investment activity.