Transfer Pricing Regulation and Tax Competition

Jay Pil Choi, Taiji Furusawa and Jota Ishikawa

Discussion papers from Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI)

Abstract: The paper analyzes multinational enterprises' incentives to manipulate internal transfer prices to take advantage of tax differences across countries, and implications of transfer-pricing regulations as a countermeasure against such profit shifting. We find that tax-motivated foreign direct investment (FDI) may entail inefficient internal production but may benefit consumers. Thus, encouraging transfer-pricing behavior to some extent can enhance social welfare. Furthermore, we consider tax competition between two countries in order to explore the interplay with transfer-pricing regulations. We show that the FDI source country will be willing to set a higher tax rate and tolerate some profit shifting to a tax haven country if the regulation is tight enough. We also indicate a novel mechanism through which it is the larger country that undertakes tax-motivated FDI, the pattern we often observe in reality.

Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-pbe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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Journal Article: Transfer pricing regulation and tax competition (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eti:dpaper:20035

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