The European Commission's CC(C)TB re-launch

Mit dem Aktionsplan für eine faire und effiziente Unternehmensbesteuerung in der Europäischen Union (COM (2015) 302), der am 17. Juni 2015 veröffentlicht wurde, hat die Europäische Kommission die Diskussion über eine Gemeinsame Konsolidierte Körperschaftsteuer-Bemessungsgrundlage (GKKB) erneut angestoßen. Die Vorschläge für eine Richtlinie des Rates über die GKKB wurden am 25. Oktober 2016 veröffentlicht (COM (2016) 683 und 685). Das Ziel der GKKB ist es einerseits, einen harmonisierten gesetzlichen Rahmen für eine Steuerbasis zu schaffen, und andererseits, die Besteuerung von Unternehmensgewinnen EU-weit zu konsolidieren sowie Gewinne gerecht auf die Mitgliedsstaaten aufzuteilen. Eine Harmonisierung der Körperschaftsteuer-Sätze wird im Rahmen der Neuauflage der GKKB nicht angestrebt. Die Entscheidung über die Höhe der Körperschaftsteuer-Sätze obliegt weiterhin den Mitgliedsstaaten

On the interdependency of profit shifting channels and the effectiveness of anti-avoidance legislation

The issue of base erosion and profit shifting has been on the international policy agenda for several years now. The aim of this paper is to examine how firms adjust their profit shifting mechanisms in a changing institutional environment. In particular, we test whether firms substitute one profit shifting strategy for another if respective costs change. To this end, we exploit changes in the strictness of transfer pricing regulations and thin capitalization rules over time in a panel of European multinational firms and study a quasi-experimental reform setting in France. We confirm existing evidence that tightening transfer pricing regulations reduces the tax sensitivity of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) substantially. Our results show, however, that this reduction includes both a reduction in profit shifting activity via the transfer pricing channel and a substitution with debt shifting. Moreover, firms using debt shifting to begin with rely more heavily on tax optimization of transfer prices when thin capitalization rules are strengthened. If transfer pricing regulations are also strict, the conditional reform effects show that the substitutive response is more pronounced for a subsample of firms with a high share of intangible property (IP). The difference-in-difference approach for the French tax reform illustrates an increase in profit shifting based on transfer prices for treated firms facing new restrictions on debt shifting. Again, the effect is stronger for IP intensive firms

Entwicklung eines Indifferenzsteuersatzes für den European Tax Analyzer

Zur Messung von Effektivsteuerbelastungen hat sich in den vergangenen Jahren ein umfassendes Instrumentarium entwickelt, das auf unterschiedlichen Methoden basiert. Der European Tax Analyzer verwendet vollständige Finanzpläne und besitzt insbesondere Stärken durch eine sehr detaillierte Abbildung von steuerlichen Vorschriften. Als Maßgröße werden bisher absolute Steuerbelastungen verwendet, die lediglich eine ordinale Rangordnung alternativer Investitionsstandorte ermöglichen. Aufbauend auf den Arbeiten von Schreiber/Ruf (2004) und Ruf (2005) wird im Rahmen der Untersuchung ein sogenannter Indifferenzsteuersatz für den European Tax Analyzer entwickelt. Diese zusätzliche relative Maßgröße erlaubt einen unmittelbaren Vergleich mit dem tariflichen Körperschaftsteuersatz eines Landes. Eine erste Anwendung des Konzepts zeigt, dass der neue Indifferenzsteuersatz insbesondere in Ländern, in denen die Effektivsteuerbelastung nicht nur von der Körperschaftsteuer bestimmt wird, eine genaue und zugleich leicht verständliche Abschätzung der zu erwartenden Steuerbelastung erlaubt

Book-tax conformity and reporting behavior : a quasi-experiment

We examine how a comprehensive change in book-tax conformity affects firms’ reporting behavior. To this end, we exploit a Reform Act as a quasi-natural experiment which implied a decrease in book-tax conformity in Germany in 2010. In particular, this reform allows firms to exercise tax accounting options independently from financial accounting. Our study builds on a unique dataset of linked individual financial statements and actual tax return data. It covers roughly 150 incorporated firms for the years 2008 to 2012. Exploiting the exceptional change in conformity, we contribute to the ongoing debate on the impact of booktax conformity. Our results show that profitable companies, which have a clear tax sheltering incentive, actually use the newly introduced reporting leeway to manage taxable income downwards. This is especially attributable to companies exploiting favorable tax depreciation rules. Moreover, we find larger opportunistic tax reporting responses for small companies with less complex and predominantly domestic group structures. In addition, we observe that a decrease in book-tax conformity induces a decrease in the general persistence of taxable income, but at the same time gives rise to higher financial earnings persistence. This corroborates our finding of increased tax sheltering activity in post reform years

The implications of book-tax tifferences : a meta-analysis

Over the last decade, a large body of tax accounting literature on the association between book-tax conformity (BTC)/book-tax differences (BTD) and firms’ opportunistic reporting behavior has emerged. Yet, existing empirical evidence on the questions whether increased book-tax conformity actually reduces Earnings Management (EM) and/or Tax Sheltering (TS) and whether book-tax differences are really indicative of such opportunistic reporting behavior is not yet clear. We therefore conduct a meta-analysis aimed at identifying the sources of heterogeneity in primary studies and at providing a consensus estimate with respect to the sign and the statistical significance level for the examined association. Our qualitative literature review reveals that major sources of heterogeneity in the study design include differences in the proxies for EM and TS and in the measures used to determine BTD and BTC. Our meta-regression results show that BTD are indeed indicative of opportunistic reporting behavior, and even more so of EM. These results are, however, weaker for studies that determine BTD only roughly as the difference between book and estimated taxable income instead of using more specific BTD proxies. Moreover, examining actual BTD computed from tax returns instead of only approximating these from financial statements strongly increases the effects. Hence, efforts taken to accurately determine BTD seem to be worth wile when it comes to the explanatory power for opportunistic reporting. Furthermore, our results suggest a negative association between book-tax conformity and EM/TS, which we interpret as an indicator for higher conformity indeed being effective in reducing aggressive reporting

Can European banks' country-by-country reports reveal profit shifting? An analysis of the information content of EU banks' disclosures

We create a novel database of hand-collected information from the country-by-country reports (CbCRs) of more than 100 multinational bank groups headquartered in the EU for 2014-2016. We compare this new dataset with information from Orbis and Bank Focus to assess in how far the new disclosure obligation increased transparency on banks’ tax avoidance behavior. Our descriptive analysis shows that CbCRs uncover a large fraction of worldwide profits and real activities in terms of employees of EU bank groups, especially in tax havens. We also document a striking disconnect between reported profits and real activity, noting considerable heterogeneity between different tax havens and bank groups from different headquarter countries. Regression analysis based on CbCR data and Bank Focus data leads us to expect a tax semielasticity of banks’ reported profits of about -4.6. In this regard, CbCRs are indicative of a more pronounced tax sensitivity than conventional databases suggest. However, the lack of important economic variables (total assets and staff cost) impedes an exact estimation of banks’ profit shifting based on CbCR data alone and with standard methods. These insights are especially relevant in the context of the ongoing political discussions whether to introduce a public CbCR for all large multinational firms in the EU

Reporting behavior and transparency in European banks' country-by-country reports

The public CbCR requirement for EU financial institutions leaves leeway to the reporting firms as regards the calculating and presentation of the data. Based on a sample of CbCRs published by EU-headquartered multinational bank groups, we analyze the reporting behavior and the degree of transparency across the reports. We observe a large heterogeneity with respect to the place of publication of the CbCR, its content, the readability of the data tables as well as the list of entities that should be published together with the by-country data. We also identify differences between headquarter countries, with CbCRs prepared by bank groups from the United Kingdom and Germany being the most transparent. Inconsistencies in reporting inhibit the interpretability and the comparability of the data. We conclude that the specification of the underlying data source and of the applicable consolidation scope as well the establishment of uniform definitions of the reportable items are essential for an appropriate consideration of the reports by all addressees. Our analyses are particularly important in light of the proposal for a public CbCR for large multinational firms in the EU

Internal digitalization and tax-efficient decision making

Our study investigates firms’ internal digitalizationas a crucial foundation for timely, data-driven decision making. We evaluate the association between digital infrastructure and improved decision making intax planning decisions to analyze if the benefits of digitalization expand beyond firms’ core business functions. The novel use of a survey that identifies European firms’ digital infrastructure over the period from 2005 to 2016 allows us to create an index of IT sophistication. Using this index, we extend prior approaches and observe the effectiveness of tax planning decisions in terms of a firm’s ability to exploit income shifting incentives. Our empirical analysis confirms the prediction that digitalized firms respond more efficiently to income shifting incentives. Further, we provide evidence that firms with sophisticated IT are more reactive to shocks in the income shifting incentive than non-digital firms. Our results suggest that internal digitalization allows firms to efficiently monitor and manage internal processes and to strategically price internal transactions. With this work, we are the first to document the association of digitalization and the performance of firms’ support functions

Quantifying the OECD BEPS indicators - an update to BEPS Action 11

In its 2015 Final Report on “Measuring and Monitoring BEPS, Action 11”, the OECD introduced six indicators to quantify and evaluate base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) activity over time. In this study, we revisit three selected indicators, provide a numerical update for recent periods using timely data and point out potential pitfalls when interpreting the indicator results. First, we transparently replicate Indicator 1, which intends to assess the disconnect between financial and real economic activities, and show a moderately decreasing trend of the indicator estimates. Second, replicating Indicator 4, which is based on a micro-data regression approach, we find that multinational firms have, on average, lower effective tax rates than domestic firms. We confirm this result using a state-of-the-art propensity score matching approach. Third, the replication of Indicator 5, which intends to capture profit shifting through intangibles, shows a stable trend of the annual indicator estimates that extends beyond the OECD’s sample period. Yet, the simplistic design of all indicators comes at the price of making them vulnerable to a number of confounding factors and economic effects that go beyond profit shifting. Overall, we conclude that the proposed indicators in the Final Report on BEPS Action 11 provide only limited information on the extent of BEPS