The Impact of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on U.S. Multinationals’ Intangible Assets

Ana Maria Santacreu and Ashley Stewart

No 2024-020, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) on U.S. multinationals’ intangibles. We develop a theoretical model that incorporates key provisions of the TCJA—the Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income (GILTI) and the Foreign-Derived Intangible Income (FDII)—and derive testable implications for changes in licensing and patent transfer patterns. Using data on international royalty flows and patent assignments, we test the model’s predictions. Our findings suggest that the TCJA may have impacted profit shifting strategies through intangibles, aligning with our model’s predictions.

Keywords: profit-shifting; intangibles; patents; taxation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 O33 O41 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2024-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-int and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/real.stlouisfed.org/wp/2024/2024-020.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impact of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on U.S. Multinationals' Intangible Assets (2025)
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:fip:fedlwp:98710

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

DOI: 10.20955/wp.2024.020

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Scott St. Louis ().