Tax Foundation Forum: Making Sense of Profit Shifting

Making Sense of Profit ShiftingProfit shifting is when multinational companies reduce their tax burden by moving the location of their profits from high-tax countries to low-tax jurisdictions and tax havens. is an interview series that aims to advance and cultivate a more informed discussion of a taxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of general government services, goods, and activities. policy topic. Tax Foundation Forum aggregates the latest research and thinking through a set of interviews with leading scholars, policy experts, and practitioners.

With its focus on the profit shifting phenomenon, this year’s edition of Tax Foundation Forum seeks to make sense of an issue that has significantly influenced the international tax debate as well as the U.S. corporate tax reform debate.

A policy-relevant topic that has received unprecedented attention in the public discourse, profit shifting is directly related to issues concerning taxation and tax planning of multinational firms. As this debate unfolds – in the U.S. as well as internationally – Making Sense of Profit Shifting aims to provide context on the topic of profit shifting by surveying leading tax scholars, practitioners, and policy experts. We hope the interview series provides a current and holistic examination of the phenomenon from an academic, practical, and policy perspective.

The series discusses a number of underlying themes: (1) What is actually known about profit shifting and which areas remain ambiguous; (2) the drivers and mechanics of profit shifting; (3) the magnitude and directional trend of profit shifting; (4) missing pieces for a better understanding of profit shifting; (5) solutions to profit shifting, with a focus on the feasibility or desirability of multilateral cooperation; and (6) the status quo and future of the corporate income taxA corporate income tax (CIT) is levied by federal and state governments on business profits. Many companies are not subject to the CIT because they are taxed as pass-through businesses, with income reportable under the individual income tax. and international taxation.

Making Sense of Profit Shifting features 18 participants that each have a unique viewpoint and understanding of profit shifting. The interviews will be published daily over the next couple weeks, starting on May 13th.

Making Sense of Profit Shifting

Participants	Interview
Kimberly Clausing	Thormund A. Miller and Walter Mintz Professor of Economics	Reed College	May 13
Mihir Desai	Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School	Harvard University	May 13
Dhammika Dharmapala	Professor of Law	University of Chicago Law School	May 14
Edward Kleinbard	Theodore Johnson Professor of Law and Business	University of Southern California, Gould School of Law	May 15
Lars Feld	Chair, Economic Policy and Constitutional Economics	Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg	May 18
Jack Mintz	Director and Palmer Chair in Public Policy	University of Calgary, School of Public Policy	May 19
Kevin Markle	Assistant Professor of Accounting	The University of Iowa, Tippie College of Business	May 20
Scott Dyreng	Associate Professor of Accounting	Duke University, The Fuqua School of Business	May 21
Pascal Saint-Amans	Director, Centre for Tax Policy and Administration	Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development	May 22
Douglas Shackelford	Dean and Meade H. Willis Distinguished Professor of Taxation	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kenan-Flagler Business School	May 28
Manal Corwin	National Service Line Leader for International Tax and Principle-in Charge of Washington National Tax-International Policy	KPMG	May 29
Harry Grubert	Senior Research Economist	U.S. Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis	June 1
Nadine Riedel	Professor of Public Finance and Economic Policy	Ruhr University Bochum	June 15
Pam Olson	Deputy Tax Leader and Washington National Tax Services Practice Leader	PwC	June 18
Thomas Neubig	Deputy Head of Tax Policy and Statistics Division	OECD, Centre for Tax Policy and Administration	June 19
Victoria Perry	Assistant Director and Division Chief, Tax Policy	International Monetary Fund	June 22
Kenneth Klassen	Deloitte Professor and Director of Waterloo Centre for Taxation in a Global Economy	University of Waterloo	June 24
Gary Hufbauer	Reginald Jones Senior Fellow	Peterson Institute for International Economics	August 3

All interviews were conducted by Tax Foundation Taxes and Growth Fellow, Erik Cederwall. The interviews are edited for length and clarity.

Share