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Full-Text Articles in Taxation-Transnational

Multinational Firms And Tax Havens, Anna Gumpert, James R. Hines Jr., Monika Schnitzer Oct 2016

Multinational Firms And Tax Havens, Anna Gumpert, James R. Hines Jr., Monika Schnitzer

Articles

Multinational firms with operations in high-tax countries can benefit the most from reallocating taxable income to tax havens, though this is sufficiently difficult and costly that only 20.4% of German multinational firms have any tax haven affiliates. Among German manufacturing firms, a 1 percentage point higher foreign tax rate is associated with a 2.3% greater likelihood of owning a tax haven affiliate. This is consistent with tax avoidance incentives and contrasts with earlier evidence for U.S. firms. The relationship is less strong for firms in service industries, possibly reflecting the difficulty of reallocating taxable service income.


Allocating Business Profits For Tax Purposes: A Proposal To Adopt A Formulary Profit Split, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Kimberly A. Clausing, Michael C. Durst Jan 2009

Allocating Business Profits For Tax Purposes: A Proposal To Adopt A Formulary Profit Split, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Kimberly A. Clausing, Michael C. Durst

Articles

The current system of taxing the income of multinational firms in the United States is flawed across multiple dimensions. The system provides an artificial tax incentive to earn income in low-tax countries, rewards aggressive tax planning, and is not compatible with any common metrics of efficiency. The U.S. system is also notoriously complex; observers are nearly unanimous in lamenting the heavy compliance burdens and the impracticality of coherent enforcement. Further, despite a corporate tax rate one standard deviation above that of other OECD countries, the U.S. corporate tax system raises relatively little revenue, due in part to the shifting of …


Passport To Toledo: Cuno, The World Trade Organization, And The European Court Of Justice, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Dec 2005

Passport To Toledo: Cuno, The World Trade Organization, And The European Court Of Justice, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The purpose of this article is to try to place the debate about Cuno v. DaimlerChrysler in a broader perspective by connecting it with the overall discussion of harmful tax competition. It discusses two hypothetical scenarios under which the city of Toledo, Ohio, is (a) a separate country and (b) a member state of the European Union. If the first hypothetical were true, the tax incentives offered by Toledo would violate the rules of the World Trade Organization; if the second hypothetical were true, the tax incentives would also violate the Treaty of Rome, as interpreted by the European Court …


Tax Competition: Harmful To Whom?, Michael Littlewood Jan 2004

Tax Competition: Harmful To Whom?, Michael Littlewood

Michigan Journal of International Law

The aim of this paper is to examine the theory that it is both desirable and feasible to prevent less-developed countries from operating preferential tax regimes (that is, offering tax incentives) as a means of attracting foreign investment.


Foreign Direct Investment In Latin America Overview And Current Status, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Martin B. Tittle Jan 2002

Foreign Direct Investment In Latin America Overview And Current Status, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Martin B. Tittle

Other Publications

More firms than ever, and in more industries and countries, are expanding abroad through [foreign] direct investment [FDI]. Although FDI in 1980 was equivalent to only 5% of world GDP, by the end of the 1990's, that percentage had more than tripled to 17%. In 1993, the total US dollar value of world FDI was only US$ 200 billion, but by the year 2000, it had risen to US$ 1.3 thousand billion. Developing countries received around 25% of these inflows, mostly in the form of "greenfield" investments, where a new enterprise is essentially created from scratch.


The Uneasy Marriage Of Export Incentives And The Income Tax, Mihir A. Desai, James R. Hines Jr. Jan 2001

The Uneasy Marriage Of Export Incentives And The Income Tax, Mihir A. Desai, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

This paper investigates the economic effect of tax incentives for American exports. These incentives include a partial tax exemption for export profits (available by routing exports through foreign sales corporations) and the allocation of some export profits to foreign-source income for purposes of U.S. taxation. The analysis highlights three important aspects of these policies. First, official figures appear to understate dramatically the tax expenditures associated with some U.S. export incentives. Correctly measured, total export benefits provided through the income tax are equivalent to a 1-percent ad valorem subsidy. Second, the 1984 imposition of more rigorous requirements for obtaining export subsidies …


Globalization And Tax Competition: Implications For Developing Countries, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2001

Globalization And Tax Competition: Implications For Developing Countries, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

This article analyses the effects of tax competition on developing countries. Since the 1980s, globalization and greater capital mobility have led many developing countries to adopt the policy of competing with one another to attract capital investment. One of the main forms taken by this competition has been the granting of tax holidays and other tax reductions to investing multinationals. This paper reviews the normative arguments for and against this type of tax competition, from a global perspective. It then examines these arguments in depth from the point of view of developing countries. The conclusion in general is that, since …


A New Export Policy: The Foreign Sales Corporation And State Unitary Taxation Of Foreign Source Income, Reed D. Rubinstein Jan 1984

A New Export Policy: The Foreign Sales Corporation And State Unitary Taxation Of Foreign Source Income, Reed D. Rubinstein

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part I of this note will examine the structure of the FSC, and analyze its potential benefits in light of the Domestic International Sales Corporation (DISC) tax incentive. Part II discusses the use of the unitary tax as a disincentive to direct foreign investment by U.S. corporations. Finally, Part III outlines the new export policy based upon a combination of the FSC export incentive and state unitary taxation of foreign-source income. If implemented, this policy would increase export production and discourage direct foreign investment, thereby making a substantial contribution to U.S. economic well-being.