Tax breaks as trade policy tools: From distorting competition to stimulating North-South R&D

The PhD project investigates the current status of tax breaks for purposes of stimulating R&D within various national taxation laws of selected EU Member States in view to design such a scheme for Switzerland. The project highlights which pitfalls of potentially EU-inconsistent R&D tax breaks a Swiss fiscal encouragement of R&D would need to avoid.
The limits of fiscal management through tax breaks for R&D in Europe will be examined by cross-comparing how national taxation laws of EU Member States implement the EU Lisbon strategy.
The study will further investigate the limitations brought to such tax breaks by the WTO subsidy disciplines on the one hand and the evolving communitarisation of taxation laws and practices in the EU on the other hand. It will review such R&D tax breaks from the viewpoint of their legality under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Duties of the WTO.
Last but not least, the project will evaluate to what extend tax breaks encourage foreign direct investment to developing and least developed countries (LDCs) and so enhance North-South technology transfer, in particular as a means to implement the obligations to bring about transfer to technology under Art. 66.2 TRIPs Agreement to Least Developed Countries.