Home Or Away Profit Shifting With Territorial Taxation

In 2009, the United Kingdom abolished the taxation of profits earned abroad and introduced a territorial tax system. Under the territorial system, firms have strong incentives to shift profits abroad. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we show that the profitability of UK subsidiaries in low-tax countries increased after the reform compared to subsidiaries of non-UK multinationals in the same countries by an average of 2 percentage points. This increase in profit shifting also leads to increases in measured productivity of the foreign affiliates of UK multinationals of between 5 and 9 percent.

Among potential tax reforms under discussion by Congress is revising the tax treatment of foreign source income of U.S. multinational corporations. Some business leaders have been urging a movement toward a territorial tax, which would eliminate some U.S. income taxes on active foreign source income. Under a territorial tax, only the country where the income is earned imposes a tax. Territorial proposals include the Grubert-Mutti proposal (included in President Bush's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform proposal in 2005) and, more recently, a draft Ways and Means Committee proposal and a Senate bill, S. 2091. The Fiscal Commission also proposed a territorial tax. Proposals have, however, also been made to increase the taxation of foreign source income, including S. 727, and proposals by President Obama. Although the United States has a worldwide system that includes foreign earnings in U.S. taxable income, two provisions cause the current system to resemble a territorial tax in that very little tax is collected. Deferral delays paying taxes until income is repatriated (paid as a dividend by the foreign subsidiary to its U.S. parent). When income is repatriated, credits for foreign taxes paid offset the U.S. tax due. Under cross-crediting, unused foreign tax credits from high tax countries or on highly taxed income can be used to offset U.S. tax on income in low tax countries. Some proponents of a territorial tax urge such a system on the grounds that the current system discourages repatriations. Economic evidence suggests that effect is small, in part because in normal circumstances a large share of income is retained for permanent reinvestment. Amounts held abroad may have increased, however, as firms lobbied for another repatriation holiday (similar to that adopted in 2004) that allowed firms to exempt most dividends from income on a one-time basis. Opponents are concerned about encouraging investment abroad. A territorial tax is generally not viewed as efficient because it favors foreign investment, but that increased outflow of investment is likely to have a small effect relative to the U.S. economy. Artificial shifting of profits into tax havens or low tax countries is a current problem that could be worsened under some territorial tax designs, and proposals have included measures to address this problem. Proposals also address the transitional issue of the treatment of the existing stock of unrepatriated earnings. The Ways and Means proposal would tax this stock of earnings, but at a lower rate, and use the revenues to offset losses from other parts of the plan, which would lead to a long-run revenue loss. S. 2091 has a similar approach. The Grubert-Mutti proposal does not have a specific transitional tax, but would raise revenue largely due to its disallowance of parent overhead expenses aimed at reducing profit shifting. The other two proposals also contain provisions to address profit shifting. In addition there are complicated issues in the design of a territorial tax, such as how to treat branches and dividends of firms in which the corporation is only partially owned. A number of issues arise from the ending of foreign tax credits, with perhaps the most significant one being the increased tax on royalties, which are currently subject to tax, have low or no foreign taxes, and would lose the shield of excess credits. The final section of the report briefly discusses some alternative options, including those in S.727 and in the Administration proposals. It also discusses hybrid approaches that combine territorial and worldwide systems in a more efficient way, including eliminating the disincentive to repatriate. One such approach is a minimum tax on foreign source income, which is proposed by the President in the context of current rules, but could be combined with a territorial system.

In 2009, the United Kingdom changed from a worldwide to a territorial tax system, abolishing dividend taxes on foreign repatriation from many low-tax countries. This paper assesses the causal effect of territorial taxation on real investments, using a unique dataset for multinational affiliates in 27 European countries and employing the difference-in-difference approach. It finds that the territorial reform has increased the investment rate of UK multinationals by 15.7 percentage points in low-tax countries. In the absence of any significant investment reduction elsewhere, the findings represent a likely increase in total outbound investment by UK multinationals.

This 2017 report sets out recommendations for branch mismatch rules that would bring the treatment of these structures into line with the treatment of hybrid mismatch arrangements as set out in the 2015 Report on Neutralising the Effects of Hybrids Mismatch Arrangements (Action 2 Report).

Is the current U.S. tax system for taxing U.S. international business the appropriate one for the modern era of globalized business operations, or should its basic structure be reformed? Contents of this report: The Current System and Possible Revisions; Neutrality, Efficiency, and Competitiveness; Assessing the Existing Tax System; Territorial Taxation: The Dividend Exemption Proposal; A Residence-Based System in Practice; President Obama's Proposals to Restrict Deferral and Cross-Crediting; Tax Havens: Issues and Policy Options; General Reforms of the Corporate Tax and Implications for International Tax Treatment. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand edition of an important, hard-to-find publication.

This paper reviews the rapidly growing empirical literature on international tax avoidance by multinational corporations. It surveys evidence on main channels of corporate tax avoidance including transfer mispricing, international debt shifting, treaty shopping, tax deferral and corporate inversions. Moreover, it performs a meta analysis of the extensive literature that estimates the overall size of profit shifting. We find that the literature suggests that, on average, a 1 percentage-point lower corporate tax rate will expand before-tax income by 1 percent—an effect that is larger than reported as the consensus estimate in previous surveys and tends to be increasing over time. The literature on tax avoidance still has several unresolved puzzles and blind spots that require further research.

Following renewed academic and policy interest in the destination-based principle for taxing profits—particularly through a destination-based cash flow tax (DBCFT)—this paper studies other forms of efficient destination-based taxes. Specifically, it analyzes the Destination-Based Allowance for Corporate Equity (DBACE) and Allowance for Corporate Capital (DBACC). It describes adjustments that are required to turn an origin into a destination-based versions of these taxes. These include adjustments to capital and equity, which are additional to the border adjustments needed under a DBCFT. The paper finds that the DBACC and DBACE reduce profit shifting and tax competition, but cannot fully eliminate them, with the DBACE more sensitve than the DBACC. Overall, given the potential major political cost of switching from an origin to a destination-based tax system, we conclude that advantages of the DBCFT are likely to outweigh the transitional advantages of the DBACE/DBACC.