Fighting Multiple Tax Havens

This paper develops a competition theory framework that evaluates an important aspect of the OECD’s Harmful Tax Practices Initiative against tax havens. We show that the sequential nature of the process is harmful and more costly than a “big bang” multilateral agreement. The sequentiality may even prevent the process from being completed successfully. Closing down a subset of tax havens reduces competition among the havens that remain active. This makes their “tax haven business” more profitable and shifts a larger share of rents to these remaining tax havens, making them more reluctant to give up their “tax haven business”. Moreover, the outcome of this process, reducing the number of tax havens, but not eliminating them altogether, may reduce welfare in the OECD

Fighting Multiple Tax Havens

This paper develops a competition theory framework that evaluates an important aspect of the OECD’s Harmful Tax Practices Initiative against tax havens. We show that the sequential nature of the process is harmful and more costly than a “big bang” multilateral agreement. The sequentiality may even prevent the process from being completed successfully. Closing down a subset of tax havens reduces competition among the havens that remain active. This makes their “tax haven business” more profitable and shifts a larger share of rents to these remaining tax havens, making them more reluctant to give up their “tax haven business”. Moreover, the outcome of this process, reducing the number of tax havens, but not eliminating them altogether, may reduce welfare in the OECD.tax haven, harmful tax practices, bidding for haven inactivation

The end of bank secrecy? An evaluation of the G20 tax haven crackdown

During the financial crisis, G20 countries compelled tax havens to sign bilateral treaties providing for exchange of bank information. Policymakers have celebrated this global initiative as the end of bank secrecy. Exploiting a unique panel dataset, our study is the first attempt to assess how the treaties affected bank deposits in tax havens. Rather than repatriating funds, our results suggest that tax evaders shifted deposits to havens not covered by a treaty with their home country. The crackdown thus caused a relocation of deposits at the benefit of the least compliant havens. We discuss the policy implications of these findings

The evolution and convergence of OECD tax systems

This paper considers theory-based expectations on the evolution of tax structures in developed countries and confronts them with stylised facts from aggregate tax revenue data. A bilateral similarity index is introduced which allows the measurement of the similarity of tax systems conditional on country characteristics. A slow but steady convergence in tax revenue structures is found which depends on the proximity, similarity and exchange between a given pair of countries

Auswirkungen der Globalisierung auf die Struktur der Besteuerung

This paper reviews theoretical predictions on the likely effect of globalization on tax revenues and tax structures in developed countries. The predictions are then confronted with data from OECD countries. The evidence suggests that, in contrast to wide-held views, globalization only marginally affects tax revenues and structures. Most importantly, while it is often assumed that globalization would undermine national governments’ ability to tax mobile businesses, corporate tax revenue has increased over time. Overall, the tax systems in developed countries are highly stable in terms of both revenues and tax structure