This paper examines whether the design of a country's tax system matters for economic growth using the Tax Foundation's International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI), a composite of more than 40 legislated tax-policy variables spanning corporate, individual income, consumption, property, and...

We provide firm-level evidence on expected tax burdens under the OECD's Pillar Two minimum tax using hand-collected financial statement disclosures from listed multinational groups headquartered in countries where Pillar Two has already taken effect. Our setting exploits a common reporting...

In recent years, a growing number of countries have enacted tax rules that require multinational enterprises (MNEs) to document their intra-firm trade prices and show that they are set as in third-party trade. The objective of these rules is to limit opportunities for strategic trade mis-pricing...

Although citizens value competitive markets and support small businesses, we observe substantial variation in market concentration. Why do politicians abstain from taking action to reduce concentration? We propose an often overlooked political benefit to concentrated markets: When concentration...

We extend Trade-Off Theory (TOT) by assuming that EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization), rather than EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes), follows a Geometric Brownian Motion (GBM), and we thus consider the role of tax depreciation allowances (TDA) in...

This study examines the compliance costs of OECD Pillar Two, i.e., the “Global Minimum Tax,” for multinational enterprises headquartered in the European Union. Collecting data from chief financial officers and heads of finance or tax departments, we estimate compliance cost determinants and...

This paper analyzes how (local) tax havens function. Using the German municipal business tax setting as a laboratory, I investigate the characteristics and emergence of local tax havens. I demonstrate that local tax havens are situated in close proximity to large agglomeration areas, while...

The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act lowered the US corporate tax rate and introduced provisions to curb profit shifting. We combine survey data, tax data, and firm financial statements to study the evolution of the geographical allocation of US firms' profits after the reform. Between 2017 and 2020,...

Many federal tax systems employ formula apportionment to allocate the taxable profits of large businesses to the federal subunits, where the subunits' specific tax rates are then applied. The formulas - such as the one recently proposed by the EU Commission and the one agreed upon by the...

Tax incentives play a crucial role in enhancing firm dynamism and aiding a nation in becoming a significant trade power. Drawing on data from the Annual Survey of Industrial Firms Database and the Chinese Customs Database for the period 2010 to 2013, this study employs a...

In recent years, a growing number of countries have enacted tax rules that require multinational enterprises (MNEs) to document their intra-firm trade prices and show that they are set as in third-party trade. The objective of these rules is to limit opportunities for strategic trade mis-pricing...

Purpose: This paper examines trademark leasing as a financial and tax instrument in the context of intellectual property management. It analyzes the economic rationale for separating and leasing trademarks, the legal framework governing such transactions, and the tax consequences arising under...

Profit shifting by multinational corporations is thought to reduce tax revenue around the world. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the introduction of standard regulations to limit profit shifting. Using administrative tax and customs data from Chile, we find that the reform was...

Despite the central role of corporate tax departments in managing multinational enterprises' (MNEs) global tax positions, little is known about how their internal design shapes corporate tax behavior. Drawing on hand-collected data on more than 8,000 tax employees across 309 publicly listed...

We study the optimal taxation of corporate and dividend income when entrepreneurs can use retained earnings to reduce their tax burden. We show that eliminating dividend taxes while increasing the corporate income tax (CIT) to keep investment unchanged raises total tax revenue. Our simulations...

Germany has introduced a comprehensive package of staggered business tax breaks to accelerate business investment and give new momentum to economic growth. The key components of the so-called investment booster program are a temporary tax write-off on machinery and other equipment investments to...

This paper develops a data-driven methodology for detecting potential profit shifting by multinational enterprises in South Africa. Drawing on detailed administrative tax and customs data, we construct a series of red-flag indicators based on firm-level profitability, intra-group transactions,...

While multinational enterprises (MNEs) shift hundreds of billions in profits to lowtax jurisdictions annually, how they do remains disputed. Using firm-level data for France in 2018, we provide the first joint quantification of the three main profitshifting channels: transfer mispricing in goods...

We find that patents registered by multinational enterprises (MNEs) in tax havens help avoid taxes in the EU but fail to increase the total factor productivity (TFP) of EU-located group members. We conclude that many of those patents' prime purpose is not to make technology available and then...

This paper examines whether the design of a country's tax system matters for economic growth using the Tax Foundation's International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI), a composite of more than 40 legislated tax-policy variables spanning corporate, individual income, consumption, property, and...

Corporate tax reforms generate cross-border investment spillovers through multinational subsidiary networks and along global supply chains. Within multinational firms, production linkages can lead to negative crossborder investment spillovers following tax increases. Along global supply chains,...

We provide firm-level evidence on expected tax burdens under the OECD's Pillar Two minimum tax using hand-collected financial statement disclosures from listed multinational groups headquartered in countries where Pillar Two has already taken effect. Our setting exploits a common reporting...

This study examined how a company's tax exposure, conceptualized as a capital structure decision factor, influences the financial performance of state-owned sugar manufacturing corporations in Western Kenya. Grounded in Modigliani and Miller's capital structure model and drawing on trade-off,...

This study examines the impact of transfer pricing regulations on petroleum tax revenue using the enforcement role of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA). Utilizing data from Ghanaian firms spanning 2002 to 2023 from reliable institutional sources including the GRA, PIAC, World Bank, and the U.S....

We provide novel evidence on bureaucratic fragmentation and weak tax administrations as central enablers of low revenue mobilization in low-income countries. In collaboration with the municipal and national tax authorities in Kampala, Uganda, we cross-link previously siloed tax records for...

We conduct a data-based policy evaluation of the first large-scale, EU-wide excess profit tax, implemented during the 2022 European energy crisis to tax the windfall profits of inframarginal electricity producers. In particular, we evaluate the inherent trade-off of excess profit taxation: the...

We exploit the new country-by-country reporting data of multinational corporations, with unparalleled country coverage, to reveal the distributional consequences of profit shifting. We estimate that multinational corporations worldwide shifted over $ 850 billion in profits in 2017, primarily to...

We document a robust relation between corporate tax differentials and US international financial integration (IFI). While this is the case for traditional IFI based on cross-border positions, the positive link also emerges for its larger consolidated-by-nationality version. The gap between these...

This paper develops a new approach to calculate country-industry-year-specific forward-looking effective tax rates (FLETRs) based on a panel of 19 industries, 221 countries, and the years 2001 to 2020. Besides statutory corporate tax rate and tax base determinants, the FLETRs account for typical...

We identify the effects of corporate income tax shocks on key US macroeconomic aggregates. In response to a corporate income tax cut, we find that: (i) labor productivity increases; (ii) entry increases with delay; (iii) exit increases; (iv) total labor increases by more than production labor....

We exploit exogenous variation in tax notches created by controlled foreign corporation (CFC) rules to better understand the profit-shifting behavior of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and its consequences for real activity. Using new data on CFC rules and information on direct parent-affiliate...