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...

This paper is the first to use information from individual country-by-country (CbC) re-ports to assess the extent of profit shifting by multinational enterprises. Unlike other data often used to evaluate the extent of profit shifting and tax avoidance, CbC reports pro-vide a complete coverage of...

How did the rise of multinational enterprises (MNEs) put pressure on the prevailing international corporate tax framework? MNEs, and firms with market power, are not new phenomena, nor is the corporate income tax, which dates to the early 20th century. This prompts the question, what is...

This paper investigates the choice of apportionment factors under a corporate tax system of Formula Apportionment. In contrast to perceived wisdom, we show that the apportionment formula contains both mobile (capital) and immobile (labor) factors if jurisdictions are granted full fiscal autonomy...

This paper studies how corporate tax hikes transmit across countries through multinationals’ internal networks of subsidiaries. We build a parsimonious multicountry model to underscore two opposing spillover effects: While tax competition between countries generates positive investment...

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) cause about 71% of all deaths globally and a considerable increase in health care costs. To tackle this problem, several Governments have designed "sin taxes", i.e, extra payments related to the quantity of unhealthy contents of specific goods. However, unhealthy...

Thin capitalization rules limit firms' ability to deduct internal interest payments from taxable income, thereby restricting debt shifting activities of multinational firms. Since multinational firms can limit their tax liability in several ways, regulation of debt shifting may have an impact on...

We study the choice between source-based and destination-based corporate taxes in a two-country model, allowing multinational firms to use transfer pricing to allocate profits across tax jurisdictions. We show that source-based taxation is a Nash equilibrium for tax revenue maximizing...

This paper analyses the effect of a firm’s organizational capacity on the reported profitability of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Better organizational practices improve productivity and the potential taxable profits of firms. However, higher adoption of these practices may also enable...

The rise in foreign direct investment and the increasing activity of multinational firms expose national corporate tax bases to cross-country profit shifting, but also lead to rising profitability of the corporate sector. We incorporate these two effects of economic integration into a simple...