There are now a range of estimates of the global scale of tax avoidance. These include: the $600 billion annual tax loss estimated by IMF researchers Crivelli et al. (2015; 2016), which divides roughly into $400 billion of OECD losses and $200 billion elsewhere; the $100 billion annual tax losses that UNCTAD’s World Investment Report…
Read moreThe ICTD is pleased to annouce a new four-day course on Taxation and Transparency to be held at the Institute of Development Studies from August 8-11th. The Topic: There is now very substantial and growing interest in tax transparency as an important element of policy-making in developing countries. Greater transparency is believed to be an important…
Read moreOn Tuesday March 28th, the ICTD is hosting a documentary film screening with special guest John Christensen. The film: The Price We Pay examines the timely issue of tax avoidance and exposes how tech giants like Google, Amazon and other multinationals are stashing trillions of dollars offshore and thus depriving governments of hundreds of billions in…
Read moreThe international tax system needs a paradigm shift. The rules devised over 80 years ago treat the different parts of a multinational enterprise as if they were independent entities, although they also give national tax authorities powers to adjust the accounts of these entities. This creates a perverse incentive for multinationals to create ever more…
Read moreInternational tax rules for multinational companies appear to be approaching a major crossroads, for three reasons. First, the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) process is increasingly seen as unlikely to deliver on the ambition of its one stated aim, to reduce the misalignment between multinationals’ declared, taxable profits and the location of their…
Read morePolicy-makers in developing countries, when choosing a mix of fiscal instruments to govern a mining or oil-and-gas development, often face a dilemma. It’s a tug-of-war between tradition, as represented by a preference for royalties that are based on the gross value of extracted product, and economic theory, represented by the use of taxes based on…
Read moreThe ICTD has since 2013 supported a number of research projects and programs on international tax issues relevant to developing countries. The ICTD is now beginning a new phase of this work, with initial funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which it is hoped will be supplemented from other sources, and may be…
Read moreThis ICTD Summary Brief is the third in our six special research synthesis pieces, produced at the end of the ICTD’s first five-year funding period in Spring 2016. This one looks at international corporate taxation.
Read moreOn Wednesday, 31 countries formally agreed to support and implement one of the main recommendations put forward by the OECD to reduce tax avoidance by transnational corporations, the BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) recommendations. This major initiative has been somewhat sidelined by media hype around Google tax payments. Have OECD governments missed the opportunity for more substantial…
Read moreThere’s surprising news from Antalya, where the G20 leaders met last weekend. The meeting was obviously dominated by immediate crises dramatised by the terrorist attack in Paris and the continuing drama of mass refugee movements. They nevertheless found time to discuss, among other issues, a new legal framework to curb international tax avoidance by multinational…
Read moreA major international effort – the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative aims to reduce the extent of misalignment between the profits of multinational groups, and the location of their real economic activity. Recent research using balance sheet data has shown major misalignments, with a number of small jurisdictions capturing a tax base…
Read moreTwo years on from a project triggered by scrutiny of the “successful” tax avoidance structures of multinationals such as Apple, Google and Microsoft, the OECD has delivered its final package of reforms on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS). Is the BEPS project a success? The answer is as elusive as the answer to the classic question “is the…
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