Understanding the Basics of International Tax Avoidance: Methods and Ethics

Описание: Recorded on February 17, 2022 as part of the International Business Webinar Series Hosted by GSU CIBER and sponsored by the national CIBER MSI Consortium.
Multinational corporations face an unequal world in many ways, including widely varying effective tax rates in different nations (although recent moves by the US, EU and other nations have agreed to start reducing the disparities, by imposing a minimum 15% corporate tax. Nevertheless, the differences in tax rates may shrink, but not disappear.

This webinar is designed to introduce academics and practitioners to the basic methods that have been used by multinationals to pay less tax in higher-tax jurisdictions, by transferring declared taxable profits to lower-taxed countries. This is not a seminar for tax accountants but rather intended as an overview or introduction to a fundamentally important subject, using simple examples that can be understood by instructors, their students and also executives in multinational companies. Across the domain of international business, the sums amount to trillions of dollars.

We will briefly also touch upon the ethics of the subject, while understanding that the term “tax avoidance” encompasses techniques that are just on the right side of legality (that is to say “taking advantage of loopholes” as compared with “tax evasion” which is breaking the regulations or law). Some executives, taking a hard line, will say that it is their fiduciary duty to pay less tax and hence deliver more dividends to shareholders. But other stakeholders would say that the ethics are not that simple or clearcut.

Key Takeaways
1. Understand the basics of international tax avoidance (with examples)
2. Ethics of tax avoidance
3. Government reactions
The International Business Webinar Series is a project of the national CIBER Minority Serving Institution (MSI) Consortium, led by Georgia State University CIBER and sponsored by CIBERs at Florida International University, George Washington University, Indiana University, Loyola Marymount University, Michigan State University, Temple University, Texas A&M University, University of Colorado-Denver, and the University of Maryland. This program is partially funded by the U.S. Department of Education.