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Too late, too little? The IMF and international tax flight
When key decision makers of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gather in Washington DC for the IMF’s annual meeting in October, one thing that...
24 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Working Paper
Policy diffusion within international organizationsI analyse the evolution of the International Monetary Fund tax policy advice in three countries commonly used for tax evasion or avoidance: Panama, Seychelles, and the Netherlands. A review of loan agreements and Country Reports covering 1999 to 2017...
Working Paper
Estimating the scale of profit shifting and tax revenue losses related to foreign direct investmentGovernments’ revenues are lower when multinational enterprises avoid paying corporate income tax by shifting their profits to tax havens. In this paper, we ask which countries’ tax revenues are affected most by this tax avoidance and how much. To...
Working Paper
Global distribution of revenue loss from tax avoidanceInternational corporate tax is an important source of government revenue, especially in lower-income countries. An important recent study of the scale of this problem was carried out by International Monetary Fund researchers Ernesto Crivelli, Ruud...
Blog
Estimating tax avoidance: New findings, new questions
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...
Blog
International tax avoidance and development
Corporate taxation is at the heart of economic development, and cardiac failure looms if international tax reform is not made globally inclusive There...
Working Paper
Did Uganda’s corporate tax incentives benefit the Ugandan economy or only the firms?Uganda has one of the lowest corporate income tax collection rates in sub-Saharan Africa, while offering generous corporate tax incentives. It is unclear whether tax incentives achieve their objectives without primarily benefiting firms, potentially...
Working Paper
Fiscal consequences of corporate tax avoidanceMultinational corporations shift a large share of their foreign profits to tax havens and, due to this corporate tax avoidance, governments worldwide lose a portion of their tax revenues. In this paper we study the consequences of multinational tax...
Blog
How global tax dodging costs lives: New research shows a direct link to increased death ratesTax abuse is an expensive business. According to a recent report by the Tax Justice Network, avoiding or evading tax deprives governments across the...
Working Paper
The tax-price elasticity of offshore tax avoidanceThis study leverages a unique data set on the universe of transactions exiting the Ecuadorian economy to estimate the tax-price elasticity of demand for tax-sheltering activities using offshore fiscal havens. I determine this elasticity quasi...
Working Paper
The indirect costs of corporate tax avoidance exacerbate cross-country inequalityCorporate tax avoidance hampers domestic revenue mobilization and, with it, the development of lower- and middle-income countries. While a wide range of studies has shed light on the magnitude of profit shifting by multinational corporations, the...
Working Paper
Countering global oil theft: responses and solutionsThis second of two papers on global oil theft discusses ways to reduce oil theft, misappropriation, and fraud. At US$133 billion per year, oil is the largest stolen natural resource globally, while fuel is the most smuggled natural resource. Oil...
Working Paper
Illicit financial flows and country-by-country reporting in extractive industriesEconomic data are important in governing the international political economy. Some of the most widely used macro statistics risk being undermined by systematic misalignment in reporting of economic activity due to illicit financial flows, as well as...
Working Paper
Global oil theft: impact and policy responsesThis paper, the first of two on global oil theft and fraud, discusses the prevalence, methods, and consequences of global oil theft, valued at US$133 billion per year and equivalent to 5–7 per cent of the global market for crude oil and petroleum...
Blog
How multinationals continue to avoid paying hundreds of billions of dollars in tax: New research
Tax havens have become a defining feature of the global financial system. Multinational companies can use various schemes to avoid paying taxes in...
Journal Article
Estimating the scale of profit shifting and tax revenue losses related to foreign direct investmentPart of Journal Special Issue Public economics and development action
Working Paper
Intended and unintended consequences of anti-avoidance rulesAggressive profit shifting by multinational enterprises (MNEs) is a growing concern for domestic resource mobilization in developing economies. This paper evaluates the revenue and welfare consequences of a flagship tax avoidance rule that has been...
Blog
From offshore oil to offshore finance: How tax havens facilitate corruption in the extractive industriesIn many countries, news of an oil discovery or the award of an exploration license is rarely greeted with enthusiasm by the general public. Any hopes...
Working Paper
Do multinational companies shift profits out of developing countries?This study aims at providing causal evidence for tax-motivated profit-shifting out of developing countries, which, while often claimed to be the most affected, have been largely neglected in the literature. It uses global firm-level panel data from...
Journal Article
Global Distribution of Revenue Loss from Corporate Tax Avoidance: Re-estimation and Country ResultsPart of Journal Special Issue Fiscal Policy, State Building and Economic Development
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