During the financial crisis, G20 countries compelled tax havens to sign bilateral treaties providing for exchange of bank information. Policymakers have celebrated this global initiative as the end of bank secrecy. Exploiting a unique panel dataset, our study is the first attempt to assess how...

During the financial crisis, G20 countries compelled tax havens to sign bilateral treaties providing for exchange of bank information. Policymakers have celebrated this global initiative as the end of bank secrecy. Exploiting a unique panel dataset, our study is the first attempt to assess how...

During the financial crisis, G20 countries compelled tax havens to sign bilateral treaties providing for exchange of bank information. Policymakers have celebrated this global initiative as the end of bank secrecy. Exploiting a unique panel dataset, our study is the first attempt to assess how...

In the wake of the fi?nancial crisis, a number of countries have introduced levies on bank borrowing with the aim of reducing risk in the ?financial sector. This paper studies the behavioural responses to the bank levies and evaluates the policy. We find that the levies induced banks to borrow...

This paper develops a model where firms can shift profits to tax havens by means of intra-firm loans and countries can protect themselves against profit shifting by taxing cross-border interest flows. The model considers two countries with a scope for welfare improving economic integration. The...

In the wake of the ?nancial crisis, a number of countries have introduced levies on bank borrowing with the aim of reducing risk in the ?nancial sector. This paper studies the behavioral responses to the bank levies and evaluates the policy. We ?nd that the levies induced banks to borrow less...

Bank deposits in offshore financial centers may be used to evade taxes on interest income. A recent EU reform limits the scope for this type of tax evasion by introducing a withholding tax on interest income earned by EU households in Switzerland and several other offshore centers. This paper...

We present a model of tax competition for real investment and profits and show that the presence of tax havens in some cases increases the tax revenue of countries. In the first part of the paper, we argue that tax competition for profits is likely to be imperfect in the sense that the...

Corporate tax systems generally maintain a sharp distinction between debt and equity, however, the advent of hybrid instruments has transformed the universe offinancial instruments into a debt-equity continuum and tax systems therefore need to draw lines that distinguish the set of debt...

The rules demarcating debt and equity for tax purposes differ across countries, hence the possibility that a hybrid instrument is treated as equity in one country and debt in another and that a ?rm with foreign investment can combine tax favored dividend income in the home country and tax...