IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cnpexx/v25y2020i6p849-864.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Big Bang: Tax Evasion After Automatic Exchange of Information Under FATCA and CRS

Author

Listed:
  • Leo Ahrens
  • Fabio Bothner

Abstract

After decades of ineffective attempts to fight tax evasion, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) recently implemented the first encompassing international exchange of tax-related information on an automatic basis. This is an important development because tax evasion contributes to rising socio-political inequality and political sovereignty losses. This article assesses the treaties’ impact on tax evasion by conducting a difference-in-difference analysis of cross-border asset data. The results show that the treaties are successful. Household assets in tax havens that are not hidden behind corporate identities are estimated to be 67 per cent lower than they would have been without automatic exchange of information. Furthermore, this reduction is not offset by an increase in treaty circumvention using identity concealment or asset shifting to non-compliant jurisdictions. FATCA and CRS thus implement the first effective international cooperation against tax evasion. The results imply that political globalisation is capable to mitigate the political sovereignty losses and rise of inequality caused by economic globalisation.

Suggested Citation

  • Leo Ahrens & Fabio Bothner, 2020. "The Big Bang: Tax Evasion After Automatic Exchange of Information Under FATCA and CRS," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(6), pages 849-864, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:849-864
    DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2019.1639651
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2019.1639651
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13563467.2019.1639651?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Fabio Bothner & Annette Elisabeth Töller & Paul Philipp Schnase, 2022. "Do Lawsuits by ENGOs Improve Environmental Quality? Results from the Field of Air Pollution Policy in Germany," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-18, May.
    2. Matti Ylönen & Wolfgang Drechsle & Veiko Lember, . "Online incorporation platforms in Estonia and beyond: How administrative spillover effects hamper international taxation," UNCTAD Transnational Corporations Journal, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
    3. Langenmayr, Dominika & Zyska, Lennard, 2023. "Escaping the exchange of information: Tax evasion via citizenship-by-investment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    4. Rasmus Corlin Christensen & Leonard Seabrooke & Duncan Wigan, 2022. "Professional action in global wealth chains," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(3), pages 705-721, July.
    5. Khadjavi, Menusch & Vertelman, Marjolein, 2022. "Closing pandora's box: How to improve the common reporting standard," Kiel Working Papers 2223, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    6. Agust n B n trix & Lorenz Emter & Martin Schmitz, 2021. "Automatic for the (tax) people: information sharing and cross-border investment in tax havens," Trinity Economics Papers tep1321, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    7. Leo Ahrens & Lukas Hakelberg & Thomas Rixen, 2022. "A victim of regulatory arbitrage? Automatic exchange of information and the use of golden visas and corporate shells," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(3), pages 653-672, July.
    8. Dominika Langenmayr & Lennard Zyska, 2021. "Avoiding Taxes: Escaping the Exchange of Information: Tax Evasion via Citizenship-by-Investment," Working Papers 204, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).

    More about this item

    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:taf:cnpexx:v:25:y:2020:i:6:p:849-864. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cnpe20 .

    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.