Corporate Taxation and SMEs: The Italian Experience

This paper focuses on the tax impediments faced by small and medium-sized enterprises in Italy. The fact that small businesses are characterized by financing constraints and have less access to bank loans is often emphasized as an argument in favour of a special tax treatment for small enterprises. On the one hand, however, the evidence that SMEs suffer severe financing constraints is not overwhelming; on the other hand, tax relief for SMEs is not necessarily the best response to financial market imperfections.