IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/4312.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trade and Multinationals: The Effect of Economic Integration on Taxation and Tax Revenue

Author

Listed:
  • Schjelderup, Guttorm
  • Ulltveit-Moe, Karen Helene
  • Kind, Hans Jarle

Abstract

The rising importance of multinationals in the world economy has been accompanied by a rise in trade between affiliates of multinationals located in different countries, and by profits being shifted to low tax countries. The effect of trade barriers on taxation, intra firm trade and profit shifting has largely been ignored by both the trade literature and the public finance literature. This Paper analyses how competition over shifty profits affects tax policy as trade barriers are lowered. The main results are: (i) a reduction in trade barriers unambiguously leads to higher tax revenue for low or intermediate levels of trade costs; and (ii) that the effect on equilibrium tax rates depends on the proportion of the corporate tax bases that is foreign owned and how far economic integration has proceeded.

Suggested Citation

  • Schjelderup, Guttorm & Ulltveit-Moe, Karen Helene & Kind, Hans Jarle, 2004. "Trade and Multinationals: The Effect of Economic Integration on Taxation and Tax Revenue," CEPR Discussion Papers 4312, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4312
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP4312
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kashif S. Mansori & Alfons J. Weichenrieder, 2001. "Tax Competition and Transfer Pricing Disputes," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 58(1), pages 1-11, December.
    2. Haufler, Andreas & Schjelderup, Guttorm, 2000. "Corporate Tax Systems and Cross Country Profit Shifting," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 52(2), pages 306-325, April.
    3. James R. Markusen, 2004. "Multinational Firms and the Theory of International Trade," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262633078, December.
    4. Huizinga, Harry & Nielsen, Soren Bo, 1997. "Capital income and profit taxation with foreign ownership of firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 149-165, February.
    5. J. Peter Neary, 2002. "Foreign Direct Investment and the Single Market," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 70(3), pages 291-314, June.
    6. Hines, James R. Jr., 1999. "Lessons From Behavioral Responses to International Taxation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 52(2), pages 305-322, June.
    7. Wilson, John Douglas, 1999. "Theories of Tax Competition," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 52(2), pages 269-304, June.
    8. Kant, Chander, 1990. "Multinational firms and government revenues," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 135-147, July.
    9. Olsen, Trond E. & Osmundsen, Petter, 2001. "Strategic tax competition; implications of national ownership," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 253-277, August.
    10. Alfons Weichenrieder, 1996. "Fighting international tax avoidance," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 37-58, February.
    11. Elitzur, Ramy & Mintz, Jack, 1996. "Transfer pricing rules and corporate tax competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 401-422, June.
    12. Michael Keen, 1993. "The welfare economics of tax co-ordination in the European Community : a survey," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 14(2), pages 15-36, February.
    13. Mintz, Jack & Smart, Michael, 2004. "Income shifting, investment, and tax competition: theory and evidence from provincial taxation in Canada," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(6), pages 1149-1168, June.
    14. Hines, James R. Jr., 1999. "Lessons from Behavioral Responses to International Taxation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 52(n. 2), pages 305-22, June.
    15. Wilson, John Douglas, 1999. "Theories of Tax Competition," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 52(n. 2), pages 269-304, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jean Hindriks & Susana Peralta & Shlomo Weber, 2014. "Local Taxation of Global Corporation: A Simple Solution," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 113-114, pages 37-65.
    2. Kristian Behrens & Susana Peralt & Pierre M. Picard, 2014. "Transfer Pricing Rules, OECD Guidelines, and Market Distortions," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 16(4), pages 650-680, August.
    3. Hylke Vandenbussche & Karen Crabbé & Boudewijn Janssen, 2005. "Is there Regional Tax Competition? Firm Level Evidence for Belgium," De Economist, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 257-276, September.
    4. AMERIGHI, Oscar, 2004. "Transfer pricing and enforcement policy in oligopolistic markets," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2004069, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    5. O. Amerighi & S. Peralta, 2007. "Exports Versus Horizontal Foreign Direct Investment with Profit Shifting," Working Papers 604, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schjelderup, Guttorm & Ulltveit-Moe, Karen Helene & Kind, Hans Jarle, 2002. "Why Corporate Taxes May Rise: The Case of Trade Liberalization and Foreign Ownership," CEPR Discussion Papers 3383, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. AMERIGHI, Oscar, 2004. "Transfer pricing and enforcement policy in oligopolistic markets," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2004069, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    3. Peralta, Susana & Wauthy, Xavier & van Ypersele, Tanguy, 2006. "Should countries control international profit shifting?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 24-37, January.
    4. Krautheim, Sebastian & Schmidt-Eisenlohr, Tim, 2011. "Heterogeneous firms, 'profit shifting' FDI and international tax competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1-2), pages 122-133, February.
    5. Kind, Hans Jarle & Midelfart, Karen Helene & Schjelderup, Guttorm, 2005. "Corporate tax systems, multinational enterprises, and economic integration," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 507-521, March.
    6. Gaëtan Nicodème, 2006. "Corporate tax competition and coordination in the European Union: What do we know? Where do we stand?," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 250, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    7. Devereux, Michael P. & Lockwood, Ben & Redoano, Michela, 2008. "Do countries compete over corporate tax rates?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1210-1235, June.
    8. Clemens Fuest & Bernd Huber & Jack Mintz, 2003. "Capital Mobility and Tax Competition: A Survey," CESifo Working Paper Series 956, CESifo.
    9. Paolo Panteghini & Guttorm Schjelderup, 2006. "To Invest or not to Invest: A real options approach to FDIs and tax competition," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 13(6), pages 643-660, November.
    10. Thomas A. Gresik, 2001. "The Taxing Task of Taxing Transnationals," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(3), pages 800-838, September.
    11. Amerighi, Oscar & Peralta, Susana, 2010. "The proximity-concentration trade-off with profit shifting," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 90-101, July.
    12. Paolo Panteghini, 2009. "The capital structure of multinational companies under tax competition," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 16(1), pages 59-81, February.
    13. George R. Zodrow, 2019. "Capital Mobility and Capital Tax Competition," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: George R Zodrow (ed.), TAXATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Selected Essays of George R. Zodrow, chapter 18, pages 543-570, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    14. Becker, Sascha O. & Egger, Peter H. & Merlo, Valeria, 2012. "How low business tax rates attract MNE activity: Municipality-level evidence from Germany," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 698-711.
    15. Schjelderup, Guttorm & Ulltveit-Moe, Karen Helene & Kind, Hans Jarle, 2001. "Corporate Taxation, Multinational Enterprise and Economic Integration," CEPR Discussion Papers 2753, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Gordon, Roger H. & Hines, James Jr, 2002. "International taxation," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 28, pages 1935-1995, Elsevier.
    17. Sven Stöwhase, 2005. "Asymmetric Capital Tax Competition with Profit Shifting," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 85(2), pages 175-196, August.
    18. Egger, Peter & Eggert, Wolfgang & Winner, Hannes, 2010. "Saving taxes through foreign plant ownership," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 99-108, May.
    19. Mauro Ghinamo & Paolo Panteghini & Federico Revelli, 2010. "FDI determination and corporate tax competition in a volatile world," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 17(5), pages 532-555, October.
    20. Søren Bo Nielsen & Pascalis Raimondos‐Møller & Guttorm Schjelderup, 2008. "Taxes and Decision Rights in Multinationals," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(2), pages 245-258, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Trade; Multinationals; Tax competition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements
    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4312. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.