EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Tax Havens and Effective Tax Rates: An Analysis of Private versus Public European Firms

Aziz Jaafar () and John Thornton

The International Journal of Accounting, 2015, vol. 50, issue 4, 435-457

Abstract: We examine the impact of tax haven operations on the effective corporate tax burdens of publicly listed and privately held firms domiciled in Europe. In particular, we consider how European firms' tax haven operations interact with factors such as listing status and home-country tax reporting systems to determine the relative tax burdens of publicly listed and private firms. Our main empirical results show that tax haven operations are associated with lower effective tax rates for both private and public firms, and that the impact of tax havens in lowering effective tax rates is more pronounced for private firms than for public firms. Home country characteristics are also important determinants of effective tax rates for both private and public firms with tax havens. Given that firms use tax havens as tax avoidance mechanism in lowering tax burdens regardless of their listing status, regulatory and tax enforcement bodies should focus on private as well as public firms.

Keywords: Effective tax rates; Publicly listed firms; Private firms; Tax havens (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H20 M41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020706315000837
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Tax Havens and Effective Tax Rates: An Analysis of Private versus Public European Firms (2015) Downloads
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:eee:accoun:v:50:y:2015:i:4:p:435-457

DOI: 10.1016/j.intacc.2015.10.005

Access Statistics for this article

The International Journal of Accounting is currently edited by A. R. Abdel-Khalik

More articles in The International Journal of Accounting from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:accoun:v:50:y:2015:i:4:p:435-457