European banks and tax havens: evidence from country-by-country reporting

Banks in the European Union have recently started publicly reporting data on profit, employee numbers, turnover and tax on a country-by-country basis; this new data source is capable of indicating to what extent banks’ profits are geographically aligned with their activities. I introduce one of the largest, hand-collected, publicly available data sets of its kind, which covers almost 50 banks for up to 5 years between 2013 and 2017. Using the data set, I identify the main locations of European bank’s profits, which include major European economies as well as countries often considered tax havens. I find that some of the tax havens have maintained high shares of profits in contrast with their much lower shares of employees or, to a lesser extent, turnover. These results indicate that while banks are likely shifting their profits to tax havens, even more detailed data would need to be published by banks to facilitate a direct observation of profit shifting.