Investment incentives : Exploration of government measures to attract investment

This project and the other work of the GSI could not have been undertaken without the generous support for the GSI provided by the governments of Sweden, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. [...] To give an example of the difficulty in where to draw the line, take the case of the former Irish policy of a corporate income tax rate of 10 per cent for manufacturing (for a deeper examination, see Thomas, 2000, 94– 95). [...] Moreover, from the point of view of a country or the world as a whole, the harms elsewhere will likely exceed the benefits to the “winning” jurisdiction. [...] It focuses in particular on the use of incentives in the spread of this industry to India, South Africa, Egypt, the Philippines and parts of the Caribbean, plus the incentives in near-shore jurisdictions like Canada, as well as some cases in the United States where the use of incentives has been credited with a decision in their favour over competing jurisdictions in India. [...] Early evaluations showed that Tier 5—with 47 per cent of the population and the least economic need—received 67 per cent of the tax credits under the Lee Act.9 Lee Act incentives formed part of the packages awarded to Federal Express and Dell, both of which were beneficiaries of amendments weakening the law’s job-quality requirements (Craver, 2005).