I provide evidence on the group structures of multinationals and analyze to what extent these structures are tax efficient. While the corporate income tax can hardly be avoided if a subsidiary is active in a country, withholding taxes depend on the structure in which the subsidiary is embedded....

From a tax planner's point of view, it is often attractive to choose debt over equity financing. As this has led to an increase of debt financing of corporations, many countries have introduced thin capitalization rules to secure their tax revenues. We analyze the influence of section 8a of the...

This paper exploits firm-level data from the ORBIS database to assess international tax planning by multinational enterprises (MNEs). Profit shifting to lower-tax rate countries is measured by comparing the profitability of MNE entities having different links to countries with different tax...

This paper assesses the redistribution of foreign direct investments (FDI) and tax revenues among countries due to multinationals’ response to international differences in corporate tax systems. The paper briefly reviews the literature on the tax sensitivity of FDI and uses a consensus...

This paper uses the financial statements of special purpose entities (SPEs) for explaining the origin and destination of dividend, interest, and royalty flows passing the Netherlands. We find that Bermuda is the most important destination for royalty flows. These flows come from Ireland,...

Using a regression discontinuity design, this study shows that strengthened bank control rights triggered by loan covenant violations lead to an increase in cash tax savings and a reduction in tax risk. This effect is driven largely by firms with more severe shareholder–debtholder conflicts....

In cooperative compliance programs, firms and tax administrations agree on cooperation instead of confrontation. Firms provide full transparency and advanced tax control frameworks. Tax administrations, in turn, offer certainty as to the tax treatment of complex transactions. In this study, we...

The literature provides ambiguous results on the effect of taxes on businesses' choice of organizational form, partly due to a lack of good firm-level data. Our micro data covers the full population of non-financial Norwegian corporations over ten years. During this period, the dual income tax...

Most studies of tax competition and the race to the bottom focus on potential host countries competing for mobile capital, neglecting the role of corporate tax planning and of home governments that facilitate this planning. This neglect in part reflects the narrow view frequently taken of the...