Corporate tax avoidance

Thomas Paster

Chapter 20 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Business and Government, 2026, pp 110-115 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Taxing multi-national corporations (MNCs) poses a challenge to national governments in a globalized economy. MNCs can move economic activities to low-tax jurisdictions or shift profits across countries to reduce their tax payments. The issue of tax avoidance has received substantial media coverage in recent years. At the same time, the pressures on governments to consolidate public finances, a condition called austerity, and expanding needs for public expenditures intensified the need of governments for raising tax revenues. While for several decades efforts at international cooperation to reign in corporate tax avoidance have been low-key, international efforts have been stepped up following the Global Financial Crisis that began in 2007. This entry first gives a brief overview of accounting methods commonly used by MNCs to reduce their tax payments, before presenting initiatives aimed at limiting corporate tax avoidance so far by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and by the European Union (EU).

Keywords: Corporate taxation; Profit shifting; Global tax governance; Multi-national corporations; OECD; EU (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035307777
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035307784.00025 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22116_20

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().