The Disappearing Tax Base: Is Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Eroding Corporate Income Taxes?

Globalization creates many challenges in the field of tax policy and one of the most heatedly discussed issues is "harmful" tax competition.2 Globalization provides new opportunities for minimizing and avoiding taxes, through the relocation of mobile capital. While a reduction in the tax burden on enterprises per se might not necessarily be "harmful," the difficulty to tax capital of multinational enterprises might result in distortions in the patterns of trade and investment. It may...
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Globalization creates many challenges in the field of tax policy and one of the most heatedly discussed issues is "harmful" tax competition.2 Globalization provides new opportunities for minimizing and avoiding taxes, through the relocation of mobile capital. While a reduction in the tax burden on enterprises per se might not necessarily be "harmful," the difficulty to tax capital of multinational enterprises might result in distortions in the patterns of trade and investment. It may also result in a redistribution of the tax burden from mobile capital onto less mobile factors, in particular labor. Similarly, it might result in a shift of the burden of taxation from large multinational enterprises to small national ones. Thus, the ability of large multinational enterprises to reduce their tax burden significantly or escape it altogether might entail more regressive tax systems, and larger budget deficits and/or the reduction in the provision of public services.3