International Tax

Studies have noted the possibility of tax treaties constraining the tax policy autonomy of developing countries, while their impact on enterprise development within host economies remains an empirical issue. This study examines the effects and heterogeneous differences in estimated effects of tax treaties on small businesses in developing countries that agree to these agreements. The…

International maritime shipping is an essential part of global business. Since the establishment of the current international tax regime in the 1920s, there has been a consensus that profits generated by this business are taxable only in the residence state – the state where the shipowners are located. Source states – the port states where…

Tax avoidance strategies by multinational companies rely heavily on tax treaties. Multinational companies can relocate financial activities across countries to ensure the applicability of the most beneficial tax treaties. This ‘treaty shopping’ can be particularly harmful to African countries, impairing their efforts for domestic resource mobilisation and achieving sustainable development goals. In this paper, we…

This paper introduces the new Tax Treaties Explorer dataset, developed with support from the World Bank and the G-24, and illustrates its use for research by tax treaty negotiators, policy makers, and researchers. The new dataset provides a rich source of data to reexamine existing tax treaty policy, inform negotiation positions, and assess treaty networks….

The digitalisation of the economy has spotlighted fundamental flaws in international tax rules, which have been exacerbated since the 1970s with the wider shift to the services economy and the growth of international services. These systemic flaws have been more evident from the perspective of countries that are mainly importers of services that have tried…

Between them, the G-24 countries have over 800 bilateral tax treaties in force. Each treaty limits states’ ability to tax income earned within their borders by investors and service providers from the treaty partner. As well as constraining states’ ‘taxing rights’, they are also vulnerable to abuse through ‘treaty shopping’. A new dataset of developing…

This article examines the growth of inequality over the past half century, which is closely connected to the rise of neoliberal policies and institutions and the latter of which shield capital from state actions that might limit wealth accumulation. Economic nationalism since the global financial crisis has slowed or even reversed this, yet this same…

In Imposing Standards: The North-South Dimension to Global Tax Politics, ICTD Research Fellow Martin Hearson shifts the focus of political rhetoric regarding international tax rules from tax havens and the Global North to the damaging impact of this regime on the Global South. Even when not exploited by tax dodgers, international tax standards place severe limits…

Multinational corporations (MNCs) avoid taxes by shifting their profits from countries where real activity takes place towards tax havens, depriving governments worldwide of billions of tax revenue. Earlier research investigating the scale and distribution of profit shifting has faced methodological and data challenges, both of which we address. First, we propose a logarithmic function to…

For half a century, the most influential international rules and standards for taxing multinational corporations have been formulated by a select group of developed countries, the OECD, with lower-income countries on the outside. Since 2013, this has changed: decision making at the OECD has moved to the ‘Inclusive Framework’ (IF), which today encompasses 137 jurisdictions….