Controlled foreign corporation rules and cross-border M&A activity

We investigate the influence of one main anti tax avoidance measure, controlled foreign corporation (CFC) rules, on cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) activity on a global scale. Using three different statistical methods and a large M&A data set, we find that CFC rules distort ownership patterns due to a competitive advantage of multinational entities whose parents reside in non-CFC rule countries. First, we show that the probability of being the acquirer of a low-tax target decreases if CFC rules may be applicable to this target’s income. Second, we show that CFC rules distort the acquirer’s location choice of targets. Third, we show that CFC rules negatively affect the probability of being the acquirer in a cross-border M&A. Altogether, this study shows that for affected acquirer countries, CFC rules lead to less M&A activity in low-tax countries because profit shifting seems to be less feasible. This behavior change could result in an increase in global corporate tax revenue

The Taxation of Passive Foreign Investment - Lessons from German Experience

The paper evaluates the working of German CFC rules that restrict the use of foreign subsidiaries located in low-tax countries to shelter passive investment income from home taxation. While passive investments make up a significant fraction of German outbound FDI, we find that German CFC rules are quite effective in restricting investments in low-tax jurisdictions. We find evidence that the German 2001 tax reform, which unilaterally introduced exemption of passive income in medium- and high-tax countries, has led to some shifting of passive assets into countries for which the exemption was previously limited.foreign direct investment, CFC regulation, passive investment

Impact of controlled foreign corporation rules on post-acquisition investment and profit shifting in targets

We investigate real investment, financial revenues and profits in formerly domestic firms once they enter a multinational entity (MNE) through an acquisition. We argue that following the acquisition, those targets are tax-optimized in a profit shifting context if they are acquired by MNEs with no controlled foreign corporation (CFC) rules in their headquarters’ countries. In this case, we hypothesize that MNE-wide profit shifting opportunities decrease high-tax targets’ cost of capital, which may have a positive effect on real investment of these targets. In addition, we hypothesize that financial revenues respectively profits of low-tax targets increase after the acquisition, since they may become destinations of profit shifting themselves. In line with the effects on real investment, profits of high-tax targets should decline. We find evidence for the effects on real investment. Further, these effects can no longer be observed in case of existing CFC rules in the acquirer’s headquarters’ country. This finding may suggest that CFC rules effectively mitigate MNE-wide profit shifting which in turn has detrimental investment effects. We also find some evidence for the expected effects for financial revenues but not for the profit measure

An Economic Rationale for Controlled-Foreign-Corporation Rules

By introducing controlled-foreign-corporation (CFC) rules, the parent country of a multinational firm reserves the right to tax the income of the firm's foreign affiliates, if the tax rate in the affiliate's host country is below a specified threshold. In this paper, we identify the conditions under which binding CFC rules are part of the optimal tax mix chosen by governments. We show that this is the case when the financial structure of the multinational firm responds elastically to the introduction of the CFC rule, outweighing the negative effects on the firm's investment decision in the parent country, and on the profits of the home-owned firm in the parent country's welfare objective. We also show that if the government is mostly interested in maximizing tax revenues, a tighter CFC rule is associated with a tighter thin capitalization rule in its policy optimum

Corporate Taxation and the Choice of Patent Location within Multinational Firms

This paper investigates whether corporate taxation affects the location of patents within a multinational group. We exploit a unique dataset which links patent data from the European Patent Office to micro panel data on European firms for 1995-2003. Our results suggest that the host country’s corporate tax rate exerts a negative effect on the number of patents filed by a multinational subsidiary. The effect is statistically significant and quantitatively large and turns out to be robust against controlling for affiliate size. The findings prevail if we additionally account for royalty withholding taxes. Moreover, binding ‘Controlled Foreign Company’ rules tend to decrease the number of patent applications.corporate taxation, multinational enterprise, profit shifting

The Three Parties in the Race to the Bottom: Host Governments, Home Governments and Multinational Companies

Most studies of tax competition and the race to the bottom focus on potential host countries competing for mobile capital, neglecting the role of corporate tax planning and of home governments that facilitate this planning. This neglect in part reflects the narrow view frequently taken of the policy instruments that countries have available in tax competition. But high-tax host governments can, for example, permit income to be shifted out to tax havens as a way of attracting mobile companies. Home countries will cooperate in this shift if their companies’ gain is greater than any reduction in the domestic tax base. We use various types of U.S. data, including firm level tax files, to identify the role of the three parties (host governments, home governments and MNCs) in the evolution of tax burdens on U.S. companies abroad from 1992 to 2002. This period is of particular interest because the United States introduced regulations in 1997 that greatly simplified the use of more aggressive tax planning techniques. The evidence indicates that from 1992 to 1998 the decline in effective tax rates on U.S. companies was driven largely by host governments defending their market share. But after 1998, tax avoidance behavior seems much more important. One indication is that effective tax rates on U.S. companies had a much weaker link with local statutory tax rates. After 1997, the new regulations motivated a very large growth in intercompany payments and a parallel growth of holding company income abroad. We attempt to estimate how many of these payments were deductible in the host country, and conclude that by 2002 the companies were saving about $7.0 billion per year by using the more aggressive planning strategies. This amounts to about 4 percent of companies’ foreign direct investment income and about 15 percent of their foreign tax burden.