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This chapter investigates the effects of the tax system on the economic factors that triggered the financial crisis. We examine two specific cases in which the tax regime interacted with these factors, reinforcing them. First, we focus on certain aspects of the tax treatment of performance-based remuneration of managers, which, coupled with other provisions, may have fostered an ever-increasing use of these instruments, resulting in overemphasis of short-term profitability and incentive to excessive risk taking. Second, the securitization process, which played a key role in the outbreak of the financial crisis, was accompanied by opportunities for tax arbitrage and reduction of the overall tax wedge paid by investors, through offset of incomes that are ordinarily taxed at different rates; a de facto exemption of CDS premiums received by non-residents supplemented the tax arbitrage.

Le opinioni sono espresse a titolo personale e non impegnano in alcun modo l'Istituzione di appartenenza. Si ringraziano Vieri Ceriani, Salvatore Chiri, Antonella Magliocco, Giacomo Ricotti, Massimo Roccas e Vincenzo Visco. Eventuali errori o imprecisioni sono attribuibili unicamente all'autore. * J.R. MacCulloch, Trattato sui principi e sui pratici effetti delle imposte e del debito pubblico, in Biblioteca dell'economista, 2^ serie, tomo X-I, 1868, p. 111. Si tratta della parafrasi di due versi di Alexander Pope (Essay on criticism, v. 253-254).