Fixing the Great Distortion: How to Undo the Tax Bias Toward Debt Finance
By Ruud de Mooij, Michael Keen, and Alexander Tieman
“The Great Distortion.” That’s what The Economist, in its cover story of May 2015¸ called the systematic tax advantage of debt over equity that is found in almost every tax system.
This “debt bias” is now widely recognized as a real risk to economic stability. A new IMF study argues that it needs to feature more prominently on tax reform agendas; it also sets out options for how to do that.