The EU Tax Observatory conducts innovative research on taxation, with a focus on corporate taxation, tax avoidance, tax evasion, and potential solutions to these problems.
By
Theo Palomo, Davi Bhering, Thiago Scot, Luciana Barcarolo, Celso Campos, Javier Feinmann, Leonardo Moreira, Pierre Bachas, and Gabriel Zucman
The paper uses population-wide administrative micro-data to provide new estimates of income inequality and effective tax rates by income groups in Brazil, capturing all income and all tax payments.
By
Sarah Clifford, Jakob Miethe, and Camille Semelet
This paper characterizes profit shifting behavior across the size distribution of multinational enterprises (MNEs) to evaluate the targeting of the recently introduced Global Minimum Tax (GMT).
Over the past decade, more than 100 jurisdictions have signed AEoI in an effort to fight cross-border tax evasion. This paper studies the effectiveness and coverage of these agreements using account data leaked from an Isle of Man bank with a large customer base in countries participating to AEoI.
This report examines the evolution of harmful corporate tax practices in recent years, as well as the development of blacklists intended to identify such practices.
By
Hjalte Fejerskov Boas, Matthew Collin, Sarah Godar, Carolina Moura, and Andreas Økland
Our analysis reveals that the volume of data exchanged internationally has increased and improved substantially over recent years and that CRS-reported foreign wealth accounts for approximately 9% of household financial wealth.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Matthew Collin, and Andreas Økland
In this paper, we (i) present the growing body of social science research that relies on leaked data, (ii) discuss the ethical, legal and privacy hurdles faced by projects relying on such data and (iii) offer a practical roadmap for researchers looking to enter the space.
The paper proposes a counterfactual approach to measure proportional treatment effects for staggered multiplicative difference-in-differences (DiD) models with Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML).
By
Jules Ducept, Sarah Godar, and Quentin Parrinello
The effective tax rate of multinational companies declined by 2.7 percentage points in the European Union between 2014 and 2022, shows a new EU Tax Observatory analysis of a decade of corporate tax reforms. The decline was exacerbated by tax competition between Member States.
This paper documents the rise of corporate tax-base narrowing measures in the EU using a novel dataset covering both tax rate and tax base reforms implemented between 2014 and 2022.
By
Elsa Leromain, Carl Gaigné, Riccardo Norbiato, Mathieu Parenti, and Giulia Varaschin
Preserving competitiveness does not require lowering environmental standards. Instead, well-designed policies can facilitate an alignment of both goals.
Cryptocurrencies pose substantial challenges to tax enforcement due to their anonymous and decentralized properties, undermining conventional regulatory practices. We study the impact of an ambitious new enforcement initiative aimed at addressing these challenges.
By
Quentin Parrinello, Giulia Varaschin, and Gabriel Zucman
This policy note provides a revenue estimate of how much European Member States could raise with a minimum tax of 2% or 3% on the wealth of people owning more than €100 million or €1 billion in wealth – the scenarios considered in the report commissioned by the G20 presidency.
By
Eva Davoine, Joseph Enguehard, and Igor Kolesnikov
The paper examines the political costs of taxation in early modern France. It focuses on efforts to enforce the salt tax, the rate of which varied across regions.
By
Sónia Cabral, Joana Garcia, Raquel Miranda, Susana Peralta, and João Pereira dos Santos
This paper offers the first detailed characterization of the labor market in a tax paradise and the first assessment of how a reform aimed at discouraging tax avoidance affected workers.
By
Tomáš Boukal, Petr Janský, and Miroslav Palanský
We develop a methodology to decompose the tax revenue impact of the global minimum tax introduced in 2024 into several components and quantify its potential impact on profit shifting.
By
Alessandro Ferrari, Sébastien Laffitte, Mathieu Parenti, and Farid Toubal
We propose a model of corporate tax avoidance that separates profits generated by real economic activities from paper profits shifted to tax havens. The model introduces ’triangle identities’ to estimate bilateral profit-shifting flows.
By
Hjalte Fejerskov Boas, Niels Johannesen, Claus Thustrup Kreiner, Lauge Larsen, and Gabriel Zucman
The working paper studies the effects of automatic information exchange on tax compliance by analyzing the universe of information reports sent by foreign banks to Danish authorities, matched to population-wide micro-data on income, wealth, and cross-border bank transfers.
The note estimates that approximately 50% of large US companies and a significant portion of multinationals from countries like China, Japan, and Germany will potentially have to disclose information on their tax haven presence.
By
Matthew Collin, Karan Mishra, and Andreas Økland
This note addresses the significant concerns associated with anonymous real estate ownership in the United States, highlighting how a considerable amount of property, including residential real estate, is held via corporate entities that conceal the true owners.
This report examines the current landscape of corporate tax transparency and evaluates how emerging transparency measures could shape future developments in this critical area.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Matthew Collin, Bluebery Planterose, Gabriel Zucman, and Andreas Økland
This note presents new evidence on the scale of foreign investment in the Dubai residential property market. Using new data comprising the ownership of a large share of the Dubai property market, we present updated estimates of foreign-owned real estate for the years 2020 and 2022.
By
João Pereira dos Santos, and Kristina Strohmaier
In this paper, we study the extent to which “golden visas” impact real estate housing markets. Using the population of transactions records from 2007 to 2019, we analyse the introduction of the Golden Visa Program in Portugal in 2012.
This paper investigates the determinants and consequences of the development of tax havens using a novel database that tracks the creation and development of offshore institutions in 48 tax havens.
This paper provides causal evidence on how multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) presence in tax havens translates into job cuts in France following the 2006 European Court of Justice (ECJ) judgement on the Cadbury-Schweppes case, which weakened member States’ controlled foreign company rules (CFC).
By
Jules Ducept, Evangelos Koumanakos, and Panayiotis Nicolaides
This working paper looks at the responses of corporations in the Greek Islands to an increase in the VAT rate from 16% to 24%. Declared profits decreased by 28% and corporate income taxes by 34%. Tax evasion opportunities offer a plausible explanation of the response.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Sarah Godar, Panayiotis Nicolaides, and Gabriel Zucman
An unprecedented research collaboration investigating the successes and failures of the fight against tax evasion over the last decade, building on the work of more than 100 researchers globally.
By
Mona Barake, Elvin Le Pouhaër, and Quentin Parrinello
This note examines the impact of the recent introduction of minimum thresholds for the global implementation of the OECD/G20 Pillar One reform for key countries in the context of the negotiations.
By
Sofía Balladares Herbert, Mona Barake, Enea Baselgia, and Kane Borders
Digital Service Taxes (DSTs) are a recently introduced fiscal tool designed to tax digital companies. This note collects all publicly available data to take stock of the first few years of DST implementation.
In this paper, we conduct a benchmark analysis focusing on publicly available Country-by-Country Reports to assess the reliability of CbCR information compared to respective consolidated financial information.
By
Pierre Bachas, Anne Brockmeyer, Roel Dom, and Camille Semelet
This paper provides novel evidence on the relationship between firm size and effective corporate tax rates using full-population administrative tax data from 13 countries.
This paper presents simulations of the tax revenue arising from the Pillar One Amount A proposal of the G20/OECD Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting.
By
Samira Marti, Isabel Z. Martínez, and Florian Scheuer
Like in many other countries, wealth inequality has increased in Switzerland over the last fifty years. By providing new evidence on cantonal top wealth shares for each of the 26 cantons since 1969, we show that the overall trend masks striking differences across cantons, both in levels and trends.
By
Giulia Aliprandi, Francisco Gabriel, and Gerrit von Zedlitz
In this note, we introduce the Public CbCRs database, a novel dataset comprising information on the country-level distribution of key tax-related financial items such as profit, taxes, and activities of over 100 large multinationals.
Country-by-Country Reporting is a key data source for understanding the activities of multinational firms. This note explores public Country-by-Country Reports (CbCRs) published by multinational companies to highlight several important trends.
We collect, digitize, and supplement Swiss rich lists published in the “BILANZ” business magazine since 1989, to gain new insights on the structure and dynamics of top wealth in Switzerland.
This paper explores profit shifting behaviour by European banks through a newly available data source. Financial institutions as of 2014 started disclosing their activity on a country-by-country level following the CRDIV EU Directive.
This paper is the first to estimate the full extent of foreign-owned commercial and residential real estate in a country, including both direct and indirect ownership.
This paper constructs time series of global profit shifting covering the 2015–19 period, during which major international efforts were implemented to curb profit shifting.
By
Manon François, Carlos Oliveira, Bluebery Planterose, and Gabriel Zucman
This note presents a new way to tax excess profits. We propose to tax the rise in the stock market capitalization of companies that benefit from extraordinary circumstances, such as energy firms following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The paper studies the effectiveness of tax amnesties and their impacts on capital taxation and public spending. We leverage rich policy variation from Argentina, which implemented the world’s most successful program, reportedly revealing assets worth 21% of GDP.
By
Manon François, Carlos Oliveira, Bluebery Planterose, and Gabriel Zucman
This paper presents a new way to tax excess profits. We propose to tax the rise in the stock market capitalization of companies that benefit from extraordinary circumstances, such as energy firms following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
A landmark annual event in tax evasion and tax avoidance policy, the event sought to review past developments, study new evidence, and project policy to the future.
By
Petr Jansky, Javier Garcia-Bernardo, and Gabriel Zucman
The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act reduced the US corporate tax rate and introduced provisions to curb profit shifting. We combine survey data, tax data, and firm financial statements to study the evolution of the geographical allocation of US firms’ profits after the reform.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Julie Brun Bjørkheim, Ronald B. Davies, and Johannes Scheuerer
Increasing attention has been given to the fact that some multinational enterprises shift income to tax haven countries, an activity that generates inequality in corporate taxation. This article examines how profit shifting relates to wage inequality.
By
Lucas Chancel, Theresa Neef, Panayiotis Nicolaides, Thomas Piketty, and Gabriel Zucman
This note provides data on wealth inequality in Russia and advocates for a European Asset Registry. A European Asset Registry would change the state of play, resulting in better-targeted sanctions and effective tools to curb money laundering, corruption and tax evasion.
This report provides an empirical analysis of tax competition between individuals and companies in the European Union, by ranking the most harmful tax regimes. It also proposes several options to address these trends.
By
Mona Barake, Paul-Emmanuel Chouc, Theresa Neef, and Gabriel Zucman
In October 2021, 136 countries and jurisdictions agreed on the swift implementation of a major reform of the international corporate tax system. In this note, we present simulations of the revenue effects of the global minimum tax of 15% laid out in this agreement.
To fully understand the significance of the Pandora Papers, it is useful to put them into perspective based on the most recent economic research, the international efforts in place to reduce offshore fraud, and future avenues to achieve greater fiscal transparency.
By
Mona Barake, Paul-Emmanuel Chouc, Theresa Neef, and Gabriel Zucman
In July 2021, 132 countries agreed to a minimum tax rate of at least 15% on their multinationals’ profits. However, the joint statement included a provision that could substantially reduce the effectiveness of this policy : the exemption of substance-based carve-outs.
By
Theo Palomo, Davi Bhering, Thiago Scot, Luciana Barcarolo, Celso Campos, Javier Feinmann, Leonardo Moreira, Pierre Bachas, and Gabriel Zucman
The paper uses population-wide administrative micro-data to provide new estimates of income inequality and effective tax rates by income groups in Brazil, capturing all income and all tax payments.
By
Sarah Clifford, Jakob Miethe, and Camille Semelet
This paper characterizes profit shifting behavior across the size distribution of multinational enterprises (MNEs) to evaluate the targeting of the recently introduced Global Minimum Tax (GMT).
Over the past decade, more than 100 jurisdictions have signed AEoI in an effort to fight cross-border tax evasion. This paper studies the effectiveness and coverage of these agreements using account data leaked from an Isle of Man bank with a large customer base in countries participating to AEoI.
This report examines the evolution of harmful corporate tax practices in recent years, as well as the development of blacklists intended to identify such practices.
By
Hjalte Fejerskov Boas, Matthew Collin, Sarah Godar, Carolina Moura, and Andreas Økland
Our analysis reveals that the volume of data exchanged internationally has increased and improved substantially over recent years and that CRS-reported foreign wealth accounts for approximately 9% of household financial wealth.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Matthew Collin, and Andreas Økland
In this paper, we (i) present the growing body of social science research that relies on leaked data, (ii) discuss the ethical, legal and privacy hurdles faced by projects relying on such data and (iii) offer a practical roadmap for researchers looking to enter the space.
The paper proposes a counterfactual approach to measure proportional treatment effects for staggered multiplicative difference-in-differences (DiD) models with Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML).
By
Jules Ducept, Sarah Godar, and Quentin Parrinello
The effective tax rate of multinational companies declined by 2.7 percentage points in the European Union between 2014 and 2022, shows a new EU Tax Observatory analysis of a decade of corporate tax reforms. The decline was exacerbated by tax competition between Member States.
This paper documents the rise of corporate tax-base narrowing measures in the EU using a novel dataset covering both tax rate and tax base reforms implemented between 2014 and 2022.
By
Elsa Leromain, Carl Gaigné, Riccardo Norbiato, Mathieu Parenti, and Giulia Varaschin
Preserving competitiveness does not require lowering environmental standards. Instead, well-designed policies can facilitate an alignment of both goals.
Cryptocurrencies pose substantial challenges to tax enforcement due to their anonymous and decentralized properties, undermining conventional regulatory practices. We study the impact of an ambitious new enforcement initiative aimed at addressing these challenges.
By
Quentin Parrinello, Giulia Varaschin, and Gabriel Zucman
This policy note provides a revenue estimate of how much European Member States could raise with a minimum tax of 2% or 3% on the wealth of people owning more than €100 million or €1 billion in wealth – the scenarios considered in the report commissioned by the G20 presidency.
By
Eva Davoine, Joseph Enguehard, and Igor Kolesnikov
The paper examines the political costs of taxation in early modern France. It focuses on efforts to enforce the salt tax, the rate of which varied across regions.
By
Sónia Cabral, Joana Garcia, Raquel Miranda, Susana Peralta, and João Pereira dos Santos
This paper offers the first detailed characterization of the labor market in a tax paradise and the first assessment of how a reform aimed at discouraging tax avoidance affected workers.
By
Tomáš Boukal, Petr Janský, and Miroslav Palanský
We develop a methodology to decompose the tax revenue impact of the global minimum tax introduced in 2024 into several components and quantify its potential impact on profit shifting.
By
Alessandro Ferrari, Sébastien Laffitte, Mathieu Parenti, and Farid Toubal
We propose a model of corporate tax avoidance that separates profits generated by real economic activities from paper profits shifted to tax havens. The model introduces ’triangle identities’ to estimate bilateral profit-shifting flows.
By
Hjalte Fejerskov Boas, Niels Johannesen, Claus Thustrup Kreiner, Lauge Larsen, and Gabriel Zucman
The working paper studies the effects of automatic information exchange on tax compliance by analyzing the universe of information reports sent by foreign banks to Danish authorities, matched to population-wide micro-data on income, wealth, and cross-border bank transfers.
The note estimates that approximately 50% of large US companies and a significant portion of multinationals from countries like China, Japan, and Germany will potentially have to disclose information on their tax haven presence.
By
Matthew Collin, Karan Mishra, and Andreas Økland
This note addresses the significant concerns associated with anonymous real estate ownership in the United States, highlighting how a considerable amount of property, including residential real estate, is held via corporate entities that conceal the true owners.
This report examines the current landscape of corporate tax transparency and evaluates how emerging transparency measures could shape future developments in this critical area.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Matthew Collin, Bluebery Planterose, Gabriel Zucman, and Andreas Økland
This note presents new evidence on the scale of foreign investment in the Dubai residential property market. Using new data comprising the ownership of a large share of the Dubai property market, we present updated estimates of foreign-owned real estate for the years 2020 and 2022.
By
João Pereira dos Santos, and Kristina Strohmaier
In this paper, we study the extent to which “golden visas” impact real estate housing markets. Using the population of transactions records from 2007 to 2019, we analyse the introduction of the Golden Visa Program in Portugal in 2012.
This paper investigates the determinants and consequences of the development of tax havens using a novel database that tracks the creation and development of offshore institutions in 48 tax havens.
This paper provides causal evidence on how multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) presence in tax havens translates into job cuts in France following the 2006 European Court of Justice (ECJ) judgement on the Cadbury-Schweppes case, which weakened member States’ controlled foreign company rules (CFC).
By
Jules Ducept, Evangelos Koumanakos, and Panayiotis Nicolaides
This working paper looks at the responses of corporations in the Greek Islands to an increase in the VAT rate from 16% to 24%. Declared profits decreased by 28% and corporate income taxes by 34%. Tax evasion opportunities offer a plausible explanation of the response.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Sarah Godar, Panayiotis Nicolaides, and Gabriel Zucman
An unprecedented research collaboration investigating the successes and failures of the fight against tax evasion over the last decade, building on the work of more than 100 researchers globally.
By
Mona Barake, Elvin Le Pouhaër, and Quentin Parrinello
This note examines the impact of the recent introduction of minimum thresholds for the global implementation of the OECD/G20 Pillar One reform for key countries in the context of the negotiations.
By
Sofía Balladares Herbert, Mona Barake, Enea Baselgia, and Kane Borders
Digital Service Taxes (DSTs) are a recently introduced fiscal tool designed to tax digital companies. This note collects all publicly available data to take stock of the first few years of DST implementation.
In this paper, we conduct a benchmark analysis focusing on publicly available Country-by-Country Reports to assess the reliability of CbCR information compared to respective consolidated financial information.
By
Pierre Bachas, Anne Brockmeyer, Roel Dom, and Camille Semelet
This paper provides novel evidence on the relationship between firm size and effective corporate tax rates using full-population administrative tax data from 13 countries.
This paper presents simulations of the tax revenue arising from the Pillar One Amount A proposal of the G20/OECD Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting.
By
Samira Marti, Isabel Z. Martínez, and Florian Scheuer
Like in many other countries, wealth inequality has increased in Switzerland over the last fifty years. By providing new evidence on cantonal top wealth shares for each of the 26 cantons since 1969, we show that the overall trend masks striking differences across cantons, both in levels and trends.
By
Giulia Aliprandi, Francisco Gabriel, and Gerrit von Zedlitz
In this note, we introduce the Public CbCRs database, a novel dataset comprising information on the country-level distribution of key tax-related financial items such as profit, taxes, and activities of over 100 large multinationals.
Country-by-Country Reporting is a key data source for understanding the activities of multinational firms. This note explores public Country-by-Country Reports (CbCRs) published by multinational companies to highlight several important trends.
We collect, digitize, and supplement Swiss rich lists published in the “BILANZ” business magazine since 1989, to gain new insights on the structure and dynamics of top wealth in Switzerland.
This paper explores profit shifting behaviour by European banks through a newly available data source. Financial institutions as of 2014 started disclosing their activity on a country-by-country level following the CRDIV EU Directive.
This paper is the first to estimate the full extent of foreign-owned commercial and residential real estate in a country, including both direct and indirect ownership.
This paper constructs time series of global profit shifting covering the 2015–19 period, during which major international efforts were implemented to curb profit shifting.
By
Manon François, Carlos Oliveira, Bluebery Planterose, and Gabriel Zucman
This note presents a new way to tax excess profits. We propose to tax the rise in the stock market capitalization of companies that benefit from extraordinary circumstances, such as energy firms following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The paper studies the effectiveness of tax amnesties and their impacts on capital taxation and public spending. We leverage rich policy variation from Argentina, which implemented the world’s most successful program, reportedly revealing assets worth 21% of GDP.
By
Manon François, Carlos Oliveira, Bluebery Planterose, and Gabriel Zucman
This paper presents a new way to tax excess profits. We propose to tax the rise in the stock market capitalization of companies that benefit from extraordinary circumstances, such as energy firms following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
A landmark annual event in tax evasion and tax avoidance policy, the event sought to review past developments, study new evidence, and project policy to the future.
By
Petr Jansky, Javier Garcia-Bernardo, and Gabriel Zucman
The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act reduced the US corporate tax rate and introduced provisions to curb profit shifting. We combine survey data, tax data, and firm financial statements to study the evolution of the geographical allocation of US firms’ profits after the reform.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Julie Brun Bjørkheim, Ronald B. Davies, and Johannes Scheuerer
Increasing attention has been given to the fact that some multinational enterprises shift income to tax haven countries, an activity that generates inequality in corporate taxation. This article examines how profit shifting relates to wage inequality.
By
Lucas Chancel, Theresa Neef, Panayiotis Nicolaides, Thomas Piketty, and Gabriel Zucman
This note provides data on wealth inequality in Russia and advocates for a European Asset Registry. A European Asset Registry would change the state of play, resulting in better-targeted sanctions and effective tools to curb money laundering, corruption and tax evasion.
This report provides an empirical analysis of tax competition between individuals and companies in the European Union, by ranking the most harmful tax regimes. It also proposes several options to address these trends.
By
Mona Barake, Paul-Emmanuel Chouc, Theresa Neef, and Gabriel Zucman
In October 2021, 136 countries and jurisdictions agreed on the swift implementation of a major reform of the international corporate tax system. In this note, we present simulations of the revenue effects of the global minimum tax of 15% laid out in this agreement.
To fully understand the significance of the Pandora Papers, it is useful to put them into perspective based on the most recent economic research, the international efforts in place to reduce offshore fraud, and future avenues to achieve greater fiscal transparency.
By
Mona Barake, Paul-Emmanuel Chouc, Theresa Neef, and Gabriel Zucman
In July 2021, 132 countries agreed to a minimum tax rate of at least 15% on their multinationals’ profits. However, the joint statement included a provision that could substantially reduce the effectiveness of this policy : the exemption of substance-based carve-outs.
By
Theo Palomo, Davi Bhering, Thiago Scot, Luciana Barcarolo, Celso Campos, Javier Feinmann, Leonardo Moreira, Pierre Bachas, and Gabriel Zucman
The paper uses population-wide administrative micro-data to provide new estimates of income inequality and effective tax rates by income groups in Brazil, capturing all income and all tax payments.
By
Sarah Clifford, Jakob Miethe, and Camille Semelet
This paper characterizes profit shifting behavior across the size distribution of multinational enterprises (MNEs) to evaluate the targeting of the recently introduced Global Minimum Tax (GMT).
Over the past decade, more than 100 jurisdictions have signed AEoI in an effort to fight cross-border tax evasion. This paper studies the effectiveness and coverage of these agreements using account data leaked from an Isle of Man bank with a large customer base in countries participating to AEoI.
This report examines the evolution of harmful corporate tax practices in recent years, as well as the development of blacklists intended to identify such practices.
By
Hjalte Fejerskov Boas, Matthew Collin, Sarah Godar, Carolina Moura, and Andreas Økland
Our analysis reveals that the volume of data exchanged internationally has increased and improved substantially over recent years and that CRS-reported foreign wealth accounts for approximately 9% of household financial wealth.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Matthew Collin, and Andreas Økland
In this paper, we (i) present the growing body of social science research that relies on leaked data, (ii) discuss the ethical, legal and privacy hurdles faced by projects relying on such data and (iii) offer a practical roadmap for researchers looking to enter the space.
The paper proposes a counterfactual approach to measure proportional treatment effects for staggered multiplicative difference-in-differences (DiD) models with Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML).
By
Jules Ducept, Sarah Godar, and Quentin Parrinello
The effective tax rate of multinational companies declined by 2.7 percentage points in the European Union between 2014 and 2022, shows a new EU Tax Observatory analysis of a decade of corporate tax reforms. The decline was exacerbated by tax competition between Member States.
This paper documents the rise of corporate tax-base narrowing measures in the EU using a novel dataset covering both tax rate and tax base reforms implemented between 2014 and 2022.
By
Elsa Leromain, Carl Gaigné, Riccardo Norbiato, Mathieu Parenti, and Giulia Varaschin
Preserving competitiveness does not require lowering environmental standards. Instead, well-designed policies can facilitate an alignment of both goals.
Cryptocurrencies pose substantial challenges to tax enforcement due to their anonymous and decentralized properties, undermining conventional regulatory practices. We study the impact of an ambitious new enforcement initiative aimed at addressing these challenges.
By
Quentin Parrinello, Giulia Varaschin, and Gabriel Zucman
This policy note provides a revenue estimate of how much European Member States could raise with a minimum tax of 2% or 3% on the wealth of people owning more than €100 million or €1 billion in wealth – the scenarios considered in the report commissioned by the G20 presidency.
By
Eva Davoine, Joseph Enguehard, and Igor Kolesnikov
The paper examines the political costs of taxation in early modern France. It focuses on efforts to enforce the salt tax, the rate of which varied across regions.
By
Sónia Cabral, Joana Garcia, Raquel Miranda, Susana Peralta, and João Pereira dos Santos
This paper offers the first detailed characterization of the labor market in a tax paradise and the first assessment of how a reform aimed at discouraging tax avoidance affected workers.
By
Tomáš Boukal, Petr Janský, and Miroslav Palanský
We develop a methodology to decompose the tax revenue impact of the global minimum tax introduced in 2024 into several components and quantify its potential impact on profit shifting.
By
Alessandro Ferrari, Sébastien Laffitte, Mathieu Parenti, and Farid Toubal
We propose a model of corporate tax avoidance that separates profits generated by real economic activities from paper profits shifted to tax havens. The model introduces ’triangle identities’ to estimate bilateral profit-shifting flows.
By
Hjalte Fejerskov Boas, Niels Johannesen, Claus Thustrup Kreiner, Lauge Larsen, and Gabriel Zucman
The working paper studies the effects of automatic information exchange on tax compliance by analyzing the universe of information reports sent by foreign banks to Danish authorities, matched to population-wide micro-data on income, wealth, and cross-border bank transfers.
The note estimates that approximately 50% of large US companies and a significant portion of multinationals from countries like China, Japan, and Germany will potentially have to disclose information on their tax haven presence.
By
Matthew Collin, Karan Mishra, and Andreas Økland
This note addresses the significant concerns associated with anonymous real estate ownership in the United States, highlighting how a considerable amount of property, including residential real estate, is held via corporate entities that conceal the true owners.
This report examines the current landscape of corporate tax transparency and evaluates how emerging transparency measures could shape future developments in this critical area.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Matthew Collin, Bluebery Planterose, Gabriel Zucman, and Andreas Økland
This note presents new evidence on the scale of foreign investment in the Dubai residential property market. Using new data comprising the ownership of a large share of the Dubai property market, we present updated estimates of foreign-owned real estate for the years 2020 and 2022.
By
João Pereira dos Santos, and Kristina Strohmaier
In this paper, we study the extent to which “golden visas” impact real estate housing markets. Using the population of transactions records from 2007 to 2019, we analyse the introduction of the Golden Visa Program in Portugal in 2012.
This paper investigates the determinants and consequences of the development of tax havens using a novel database that tracks the creation and development of offshore institutions in 48 tax havens.
This paper provides causal evidence on how multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) presence in tax havens translates into job cuts in France following the 2006 European Court of Justice (ECJ) judgement on the Cadbury-Schweppes case, which weakened member States’ controlled foreign company rules (CFC).
By
Jules Ducept, Evangelos Koumanakos, and Panayiotis Nicolaides
This working paper looks at the responses of corporations in the Greek Islands to an increase in the VAT rate from 16% to 24%. Declared profits decreased by 28% and corporate income taxes by 34%. Tax evasion opportunities offer a plausible explanation of the response.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Sarah Godar, Panayiotis Nicolaides, and Gabriel Zucman
An unprecedented research collaboration investigating the successes and failures of the fight against tax evasion over the last decade, building on the work of more than 100 researchers globally.
By
Mona Barake, Elvin Le Pouhaër, and Quentin Parrinello
This note examines the impact of the recent introduction of minimum thresholds for the global implementation of the OECD/G20 Pillar One reform for key countries in the context of the negotiations.
By
Sofía Balladares Herbert, Mona Barake, Enea Baselgia, and Kane Borders
Digital Service Taxes (DSTs) are a recently introduced fiscal tool designed to tax digital companies. This note collects all publicly available data to take stock of the first few years of DST implementation.
In this paper, we conduct a benchmark analysis focusing on publicly available Country-by-Country Reports to assess the reliability of CbCR information compared to respective consolidated financial information.
By
Pierre Bachas, Anne Brockmeyer, Roel Dom, and Camille Semelet
This paper provides novel evidence on the relationship between firm size and effective corporate tax rates using full-population administrative tax data from 13 countries.
This paper presents simulations of the tax revenue arising from the Pillar One Amount A proposal of the G20/OECD Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting.
By
Samira Marti, Isabel Z. Martínez, and Florian Scheuer
Like in many other countries, wealth inequality has increased in Switzerland over the last fifty years. By providing new evidence on cantonal top wealth shares for each of the 26 cantons since 1969, we show that the overall trend masks striking differences across cantons, both in levels and trends.
By
Giulia Aliprandi, Francisco Gabriel, and Gerrit von Zedlitz
In this note, we introduce the Public CbCRs database, a novel dataset comprising information on the country-level distribution of key tax-related financial items such as profit, taxes, and activities of over 100 large multinationals.
Country-by-Country Reporting is a key data source for understanding the activities of multinational firms. This note explores public Country-by-Country Reports (CbCRs) published by multinational companies to highlight several important trends.
We collect, digitize, and supplement Swiss rich lists published in the “BILANZ” business magazine since 1989, to gain new insights on the structure and dynamics of top wealth in Switzerland.
This paper explores profit shifting behaviour by European banks through a newly available data source. Financial institutions as of 2014 started disclosing their activity on a country-by-country level following the CRDIV EU Directive.
This paper is the first to estimate the full extent of foreign-owned commercial and residential real estate in a country, including both direct and indirect ownership.
This paper constructs time series of global profit shifting covering the 2015–19 period, during which major international efforts were implemented to curb profit shifting.
By
Manon François, Carlos Oliveira, Bluebery Planterose, and Gabriel Zucman
This note presents a new way to tax excess profits. We propose to tax the rise in the stock market capitalization of companies that benefit from extraordinary circumstances, such as energy firms following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The paper studies the effectiveness of tax amnesties and their impacts on capital taxation and public spending. We leverage rich policy variation from Argentina, which implemented the world’s most successful program, reportedly revealing assets worth 21% of GDP.
By
Manon François, Carlos Oliveira, Bluebery Planterose, and Gabriel Zucman
This paper presents a new way to tax excess profits. We propose to tax the rise in the stock market capitalization of companies that benefit from extraordinary circumstances, such as energy firms following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
A landmark annual event in tax evasion and tax avoidance policy, the event sought to review past developments, study new evidence, and project policy to the future.
By
Petr Jansky, Javier Garcia-Bernardo, and Gabriel Zucman
The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act reduced the US corporate tax rate and introduced provisions to curb profit shifting. We combine survey data, tax data, and firm financial statements to study the evolution of the geographical allocation of US firms’ profits after the reform.
By
Annette Alstadsæter, Julie Brun Bjørkheim, Ronald B. Davies, and Johannes Scheuerer
Increasing attention has been given to the fact that some multinational enterprises shift income to tax haven countries, an activity that generates inequality in corporate taxation. This article examines how profit shifting relates to wage inequality.
By
Lucas Chancel, Theresa Neef, Panayiotis Nicolaides, Thomas Piketty, and Gabriel Zucman
This note provides data on wealth inequality in Russia and advocates for a European Asset Registry. A European Asset Registry would change the state of play, resulting in better-targeted sanctions and effective tools to curb money laundering, corruption and tax evasion.
This report provides an empirical analysis of tax competition between individuals and companies in the European Union, by ranking the most harmful tax regimes. It also proposes several options to address these trends.
By
Mona Barake, Paul-Emmanuel Chouc, Theresa Neef, and Gabriel Zucman
In October 2021, 136 countries and jurisdictions agreed on the swift implementation of a major reform of the international corporate tax system. In this note, we present simulations of the revenue effects of the global minimum tax of 15% laid out in this agreement.
To fully understand the significance of the Pandora Papers, it is useful to put them into perspective based on the most recent economic research, the international efforts in place to reduce offshore fraud, and future avenues to achieve greater fiscal transparency.
By
Mona Barake, Paul-Emmanuel Chouc, Theresa Neef, and Gabriel Zucman
In July 2021, 132 countries agreed to a minimum tax rate of at least 15% on their multinationals’ profits. However, the joint statement included a provision that could substantially reduce the effectiveness of this policy : the exemption of substance-based carve-outs.
By
João Pereira dos Santos, and Kristina Strohmaier
In this paper, we study the extent to which “golden visas” impact real estate housing markets. Using the population of transactions records from 2007 to 2019, we analyse the introduction of the Golden Visa Program in Portugal in 2012.
This paper provides causal evidence on how multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) presence in tax havens translates into job cuts in France following the 2006 European Court of Justice (ECJ) judgement on the Cadbury-Schweppes case, which weakened member States’ controlled foreign company rules (CFC).
By
Jules Ducept, Evangelos Koumanakos, and Panayiotis Nicolaides
This working paper looks at the responses of corporations in the Greek Islands to an increase in the VAT rate from 16% to 24%. Declared profits decreased by 28% and corporate income taxes by 34%. Tax evasion opportunities offer a plausible explanation of the response.