In the 1980s, the United States enacted three modifications to its taxation of non-residents that are arguably discriminatory. This paper discusses which of them were actually discriminatory and what the proper criterion for tax discrimination should be. It suggests that the key question should...

If we want to narrow the North-South divide that threatens our world, some limits on tax competition are inevitable. The world faces a crucial choice in the 2020s. We can either continue retreating from globalization in favor of xenophobic nationalism, tariffs, immigration restrictions, and...

The current system of taxing the income of multinational firms in the United States is flawed across multiple dimensions. The system provides an artificial tax incentive to earn income in low-tax countries, rewards aggressive tax planning, and is not compatible with any common metrics of...

In 1993, I published a paper advocating a destination-based corporate income tax (DBCT) (Avi-Yonah, 1993). Under DBCT, multinational enterprises (MNEs) would be treated as unitary businesses and taxed based on where they sell their goods or services, i.e., on a destination basis rather than (as...

This article will argue that we should tax corporations for the same reason we originally adopted the corporate tax in 1909: to limit the power and regulate the behavior of our largest corporations, which are monopolies or quasi-monopolies that dominate their respective fields and drive their...

This chapter examines the origins of the current corporate tax in the Corporate Excise Tax Act of 1909. It argues that unlike the 1894 version of the corporate tax, which was aimed primarily at taxing wealthy shareholders, the 1909 tax had a regulatory aim: It was intended to regulate and...

This essay argues that the current COVID-19 crisis is the perfect time to make revenue-raising reforms to state corporate income taxes — reforms that would have been desirable policy improvements even during an economic upturn, but that are even more clearly good policy moves in light of the...

Between the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, the question of what to do about “trusts” dominated American political life. Before 1889, the dominant form of amalgamating competing businesses was the trust, because corporations could not hold shares in other...

With the election of Donald Trump and the Republican Party's domination of Congress, it is time to seriously consider House Speaker Paul Ryan's blueprint for fundamental tax reform. The Ryan blueprint combines reduced individual rates with a destination-based consumption or cash flow type...