The Impact of Headquarter and Subsidiary Locations on Multinationals' Effective Tax Rates

Kevin S. Markle and Douglas A. Shackelford

Tax Policy and the Economy, 2014, vol. 28, issue 1, 33 - 62

Abstract: We examine effective tax rates (ETRs) for 9,022 multinationals from 87 countries from 2006 to 2011. We find that, despite extensive investments in international tax avoidance, multinationals headquartered in Japan, the United States, and some high-tax European countries continue to face substantially higher worldwide taxes than their counterparts in havens and other less heavily taxed locations. Other findings include: (1) effective tax rates remained steady over the investigation period; (2) entering a tax haven country for the first time results in a slight reduction in the firm's ETR; (3) ETR changes vary depending on whether the subsidiary is a financial conduit or an operating subsidiary. These results should aid ongoing international tax policy debates and expand scholars' understanding about the taxation of multinationals.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/675587 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/675587 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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:ucp:tpolec:doi:10.1086/675587

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Tax Policy and the Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().