International Corporate Tax Avoidance: A Review of the Channels, Magnitudes, and Blind Spots

Sebastian Beer, Ruud de Mooij and Li Liu

No 7184, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper reviews the rapidly growing empirical literature on international tax avoidance by multinational corporations. It surveys evidence on main channels of corporate tax avoidance including transfer mispricing, international debt shifting, treaty shopping, tax deferral and corporate inversions. Moreover, it performs a meta analysis of the extensive literature that estimates the overall size of profit shifting. We find that the literature suggests that, for the most recent year, a 1 percentage-point lower corporate tax rate compared to other countries will expand before-tax income by 1.5 percent—an effect that is larger than reported as the consensus estimate in previous surveys and tends to be increasing over time. The literature on tax avoidance still has several unresolved puzzles and blind spots that require further research.

Keywords: corporate taxation; multinationals; profit shifting; international tax avoidance; meta analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 H25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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Related works:
Journal Article: INTERNATIONAL CORPORATE TAX AVOIDANCE: A REVIEW OF THE CHANNELS, MAGNITUDES, AND BLIND SPOTS (2020)
Working Paper: International Corporate Tax Avoidance: A Review of the Channels, Magnitudes, and Blind Spots (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7184

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