Do Multinationals or Domestic Firms Face Higher Effective Tax Rates?

To our knowledge, this paper provides the most comprehensive analysis of firm-level corporate income tax expenses to date. We use publicly available financial statement information to estimate firm-level effective tax rates (ETRs) for 10,642 corporations from 85 countries from 1988 to 2007. We find that multinationals and domestic-only companies face similar ETRs. We also find that, on average, ETRs declined by seven percentage points or 20% over the period. German, Japanese, Australian and Canadian decreases were large. American, British, and French declines were more modest. Nonetheless, because ETRs were falling worldwide, the ordinal rank from high-tax countries to low-tax countries changed little. Japanese firms always faced the highest ETRs. ETRs for tax havens and countries from the Middle East and Asia (ignoring Japan) were always lower than those for the U.S. and European countries. These findings should provide some empirical underpinning for ongoing policy debates about the taxation of multinational profits.

Shift happens: a comparison of the tax-motivated income shifting of multinationals in territorial and worldwide countries

This paper tests for differences in the tax-motivated income shifting behaviors of multinationals subject to different systems of taxing foreign earnings. I find that multinationals subject to territorial tax regimes shift more income than those subject to worldwide tax regimes, but that the difference in shifting is not statistically different when the worldwide firms can defer repatriation of the shifted income. I also find that the difference in shifting is greater when the multinational is cash-constrained in its home country. In additional tests, I find that worldwide firms bear the dead-weight cost of having cash trapped in foreign subsidiaries while territorial firms do not

Cross-Country Comparisons of Corporate Income Taxes

To our knowledge, this paper provides the most comprehensive analysis of firm-level corporate income taxes to date. We use publicly available financial statement information for 11,602 public corporations from 82 countries from 1988 to 2009 to estimate country-level effective tax rates (ETRs). We find that the location of a multinational and its subsidiaries substantially affects its worldwide ETR. Japanese firms always faced the highest ETRs. U.S. multinationals are among the highest taxed. Multinationals based in tax havens face the lowest taxes. We find that ETRs have been falling over the last two decades; however, the ordinal rank from high-tax countries to low-tax countries has changed little. We also find little difference between the ETRs of multinationals and domestic-only firms. Besides enhancing our knowledge about international taxes, these findings should provide some empirical underpinning for ongoing policy debates about the taxation of multinationals.

Repatriation Taxes, Internal Agency Conflicts, and Subsidiary-level Investment Efficiency

Using a global sample of multinational corporations (MNCs) and their foreign subsidiaries, we find that repatriation taxes impair subsidiary-level investment efficiency. Consistent with internal agency conflicts between the central management of the MNC and the manager of the foreign subsidiary being the driver, we find that this effect is prevalent in subsidiaries with high information asymmetry, in subsidiaries that are weakly monitored, and subsidiaries of cash-rich MNCs. Natural experiments in the UK and Japan establish a causal relationship for our findings and suggest that a repeal of repatriation taxes increases subsidiary-level investment efficiency while reducing the level of investment. Our paper provides timely empirical evidence to inform expectations for the effects of a recent change to the U.S. international tax law which eliminated repatriation taxes from most of the future foreign earnings of U.S. MNCs.Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Serie

Seasonal temperatures in West Antarctica during the Holocene

The recovery of long-term climate proxy records with seasonal resolution is rare because of natural smoothing processes, discontinuities and limitations in measurement resolution. Yet insolation forcing, a primary driver of multimillennial-scale climate change, acts through seasonal variations with direct impacts on seasonal climate1. Whether the sensitivity of seasonal climate to insolation matches theoretical predictions has not been assessed over long timescales. Here, we analyse a continuous record of water-isotope ratios from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core to reveal summer and winter temperature changes through the last 11,000 years. Summer temperatures in West Antarctica increased through the early-to-mid-Holocene, reached a peak 4,100 years ago and then decreased to the present. Climate model simulations show that these variations primarily reflect changes in maximum summer insolation, confirming the general connection between seasonal insolation and warming and demonstrating the importance of insolation intensity rather than seasonally integrated insolation or season duration2,3. Winter temperatures varied less overall, consistent with predictions from insolation forcing, but also fluctuated in the early Holocene, probably owing to changes in meridional heat transport. The magnitudes of summer and winter temperature changes constrain the lowering of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet surface since the early Holocene to less than 162 m and probably less than 58 m, consistent with geological constraints elsewhere in West Antarctica4-7

word~river literary review (2012)

wordriver is a literary journal dedicated to the poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction of adjunct, part-time and fulltime instructors teaching under a semester or yearly contract in our universities, colleges, and community colleges worldwide. Graduate student teachers who have used up their teaching assistant time and are teaching with adjunct contracts for the remainder of their graduate program are also eligible. We’re looking for work that demonstrates the creativity and craft of adjunct/part-time instructors in English and other disciplines. We reserve first publication rights and onetime anthology publication rights for all work published. We do not accept simultaneous submissions.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/word_river/1003/thumbnail.jp

Repatriation taxes, internal agency conflicts, and subsidiary-level investment efficiency

Nominated for the 2021 VHB Best Paper Award</p