外文翻译--在通货膨胀下企业税制改革对中小企业投资决策的影响精选.doc

原文： Effects of Corporate Tax Reforms on SMEs’ Investment Decisions under the Particular Consideration of Inflation Corporate tax reforms carried out in EU countries since 1980 entail lower statutory tax rates and reductions in generous tax depreciation provisions. Several countries including the UK have reduced tax rates for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This study compares incentive effects of such reforms on the SMEs’ investment decisions adopting a simple present value model. Ceteris paribus, tax rates and depreciation rules vary in the model simulation, while the application of historical cost accounting method in inflationary phases leads to fictitious increases in nominal net present value. Apart from the construction of international ranking, country-specific patterns of reform effects are also illustrated. The vast majority of firms that operate in advanced countries are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, SMEs’ competitiveness significantly affects the competitive position of a country’s economy as a whole. The concentration of SMEs’ activities on domestic market leads to a bounded business vision. Combined with the asymmetric information about profit opportunities abroad, this fact tends to limit the diversification of SMEs’ investments in an international context. Consequently they appear to be more directly affected by the national corporate tax reform than is the case with large multinational firms. On the other hand, SMEs have quite often been the primary target group of such an investment promotion policy (Chen et al., 2002; Devereux et al., 2004; Hendricks et al., 1997). According to Coyne (1995), SMEs are generally more responsive to domestic tax incentives than large ones. Taxes may play a more important role in the cost structure of SMEs because they do not have the financial and human capacity to developed sophisticated tax avoidance strategies. Some EU countries including the UK have traditionally had lower tax rat