Where Does Multinational Profit Go with Territorial Taxation? Evidence from the UK

Dominika Langenmayr and Li Liu

No 8047, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: In 2009, the United Kingdom abolished the taxation of profits earned abroad and introduced a territorial tax system. Under the territorial system, firms have strong incentives to shift profits abroad. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we show that profits of UK subsidiaries in low-tax countries increased after the reform compared to subsidiaries of non-UK multinationals in the same countries, by an average of 2.1 percentage points. The increase in profit shifting also leads to increases in measured productivity of the foreign affiliates of UK multinationals of between 5 and 9 percent.

Keywords: profit shifting; territorial tax system; multinational firms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 H25 H87 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-eur, nep-int, nep-pbe and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Working Paper: Where Does Multinational Profit Go with Territorial Taxation? Evidence from the UK (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8047

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