Working Paper
Big and ‘unprofitable’
Globally, the largest 0.001 per cent of firms earn roughly one-third of all corporate profits. Nonetheless, there is little understanding of how profit shifting differs across firm size. Using South African corporate tax returns from 2010–14, we...
Working Paper
Tax-motivated transfer mispricing in South Africa
This paper provides the first direct systematic evidence of profit shifting through transfer mispricing in a developing country. Using South African transaction-level customs data, I directly test for transfer price deviations from arm’s-length...
Working Paper
Do multinational companies shift profits out of developing countries?
This study aims at providing causal evidence for tax-motivated profit-shifting out of developing countries, which, while often claimed to be the most affected, have been largely neglected in the literature. It uses global firm-level panel data from...
Journal Article
Tax-motivated transfer mispricing in South Africa
This paper provides the first direct systematic evidence of profit shifting through transfer mispricing in a developing country. Using South African transaction-level customs data, the author directly tests for transfer price deviations from arm's...
Working Paper
Illicit financial flows and the Global South
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) constitute a major challenge for development in the Global South, as domestic resource mobilization is imperative for providing crucial public services. While several methods offer to measure the extent of IFFs, each...
Technical Note
Identifying foreign firms and South African multinational enterprises
The identification of foreign firms and South African multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the CIT-IRP5 panel has proved to be a challenge for many researchers. The CIT-IRP5 panel contains variables indicating different thresholds that determine...
Working Paper
The indirect costs of corporate tax avoidance exacerbate cross-country inequality
Corporate tax avoidance hampers domestic revenue mobilization and, with it, the development of lower- and middle-income countries. While a wide range of studies has shed light on the magnitude of profit shifting by multinational corporations, the...
Working Paper
Profit shifting by multinational corporations in Kenya
Illicit financial flows directly impact a country’s ability to raise, retain, and mobilize its own resources to finance sustainable development. Against a backdrop of a weak public financial position attributed to capital flight, tax avoidance, and...
Working Paper
The case of taxing multinational corporations in Uganda
We study how large domestic firms and multinational corporations compare in their effective tax rates and whether there is evidence of profit shifting out of Uganda. Using administrative data from the Uganda Revenue Authority and regression analysis...
Blog
Co-creation for fair and efficient taxation: Research recommendations to improve policies
by
Maria Jouste, Tina Kaidu Barugahara, Nicholas Musoke
August 2021
How can we determine the taxation of wage earners or multinational corporations in a fair manner? Will simplifying tax administration help increase...
Working Paper
Global profit shifting, 1975–2019
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. We find that (i) multinational profits grew faster than global profits, (ii)...
Journal Article
The dominant role of large firms in profit shifting
Globally, the largest 0.001 per cent of frms earn one-third of all corporate profts. Nonetheless, there is little understanding of how proft shifting difers across frm size. Using the universe of South African corporate tax returns and global...
Working Paper
Profit-shifting behaviour of emerging multinationals from India
This paper examines the profit-shifting behaviour of emerging multinational firms from India. It is found that the before-tax profitability of subsidiaries differs according to whether they were established directly or via an Offshore Financial...
Working Paper
Profit shifting by multinational corporations
Research on profit shifting by multinational corporations in developing countries is limited due to a lack of data. In this paper we use, for the first time, novel administrative data on the transactions of multinational corporations operating in...
Journal Article
Illicit financial flows and developing countries
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) constitute a major challenge for development in low-income countries, as domestic resource mobilization is imperative for providing crucial public services. This study focuses exclusively on the economic dimension of...
Working Paper
Fiscal consequences of corporate tax avoidance
Multinational corporations shift a large share of their foreign profits to tax havens and, due to this corporate tax avoidance, governments worldwide lose a portion of their tax revenues. In this paper we study the consequences of multinational tax...