This Comment evaluates four recent proposals to reform tax laws affecting the financial industry. After introducing the proposals, the author provides a theoretical framework for evaluating them and then relies on this framework to explore the benefits and drawbacks of each. Ultimately, the...

This paper examines the interaction between income diversion and firm performance. Using unique Russian banking transaction data, I identify 42,483 spacemen, fly-by-night firms created specifically for income diversion. Next, I build a direct measure of income diversion for 45,429 companies and...

Do corporate tax avoidance activities advance shareholder interests? This paper tests alternative theories of corporate tax avoidance that yield distinct predictions on the valuation of corporate tax avoidance. Unexplained differences between income reported to capital markets and to tax...

Taxation and corporate governance interact in various ways. Tax law influences corporate governance structures in companies by offering tax privileges or imposing penalties. On the other hand actual corporate governance structures in place have an impact on the way companies manage their tax...

Studies in the theory of the firm help explain partnership attributes and the relationships partners have with each other, which in turn inform the analysis of partnership tax allocation rules. Those studies suggest that partners apportion partnership economic items (such as income and loss) to...

When multinationals face lower tax rates abroad than in the US, transfer pricing strategies generate an asymmetry in the tax rates on a project's profits and losses. We show that the tax savings from transfer pricing can be expressed as a long position in a call option. We use a model to show...

Valuation issues have long posed challenges for the U.S. federal tax system. This is not just because of questions about what technique will most accurately value particular types of property. A key problem for tax administration is that taxpayers have an incentive to claim erroneous,...

We examine the relation between corporate cash holdings and tax net operating loss carryforwards (NOLs). Prior literature demonstrates that firms should distribute cash to shareholders, rather than retain the cash and generate passive investment income taxed at both corporate and investor...

This paper shows that companies substitute debt and non-debt tax planning strategies. Room for interpretation in the tax law, which is necessary for the wide application of the law, creates 'legal uncertainty' and consequently opportunities for tax planning. Theory suggests these new...

This is the eighth in a series of sixteen papers about the U.S extraterritorial tax system.The U.S. extraterritorial tax system violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause in multiple ways. This eighth paper in the series examines two of those ways, demonstrating that the system is...