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This book undertakes a fundamental review of the existing international regime for taxing business profit. It steps back from the current political debates on how to combat profit shifting and how taxing rights over the profits of the digitalized economy should be allocated. Instead, it starts from first principles to ask how we should evaluate a tax on business profit—and whether there is any good rationale for such a tax in the first place. It then goes on to evaluate the existing regime and a number of alternatives that have been proposed. It argues that the existing regime is fundamentally flawed, and that there is a need for radical reform. The key conclusion from the analysis is that there would be significant gains from a reform that moved the regime towards taxing profit in the country in which a business made its sales to third parties. That conclusion informs two proposals that are put forward in detail and evaluated: the Residual Profit Allocation by Income (RPAI) and the Destination-based Cash Flow Tax (DBCFT). The book is authored by group of economists and lawyers—the Oxford International Tax Group, chaired by Michael Devereux. It draws insights from both economics and law—including economic theory, empirical evidence on the impact of taxes, and a detailed examination of practical issues of implementation—to assess the existing system and to consider fundamental reforms. This book will be useful to tax policy makers, tax professionals, academics, and anyone interested in tax policy.

The United Kingdom (UK) adopted “value creation” as the guiding principle for designing its digital services tax (DST). This article argues that this principle acts as a double-edged sword. On the ...

This paper considers the implications of the destination-based cash flow tax (DBCFT) for three common ways of shifting taxable profits between countries: through manipulation of transfer prices, the use of debt, and locating intangible assets in low taxed jurisdictions. It shows that none of these planning devices would be available under a DBCFT, if adopted universally. This is because intra-group payments between two countries do not affect tax liabilities in either country . If adopted unilaterally, however, there would be an incentive to shift profit to the adopting country, at the expense of non-adopting countries.

This article provides some preliminary thoughts on tax policy and the COVID-19 crisis. In the first part, it discusses fiscal measures available to policymakers in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The role of taxation will evolve over the different phases of the pandemic: measures have already been adopted to respond to the crisis in the short-term, but questions remain as to the types of measures that should be adopted in the medium and longer-term. In the second part, this article discusses the current and possible future effects of the pandemic on international tax policy.

This paper is a draft chapter of a forthcoming book on the taxation of international business profit by the authors of this paper, to be published by Oxford University Press. The group has been meeting regularly for five years, to identify and discuss the key problems of the existing international tax system, and to develop potential options for reform. The book will study two proposals for reform in depth. One is the destination-based cash flow tax – a draft chapter on this proposal has already been released. The second proposal – for a form of residual profit allocation - is presented here. This paper is largely self-standing and can be read without necessarily reading the rest of the book, although it does refer in places to arguments set out in other draft chapters.

It is now widely taken as axiomatic that the existing international corporate tax system is based on the principle that corporate profits are taxed where value is created (the “value creation principle”). There also appears to be widespread agreement, at least amongst policymakers, that the system should be based on this principle. This policy paper disputes both these descriptive and normative claims.

The most significant problems with the existing system for taxing the profit of multinational companies stem from two related sources. First, the underlying ‘1920s compromise’ for allocating the rights to tax profit between countries is both inappropriate and increasingly hard to implement in a modern economic setting. Second, because the system is based on taxing mobile activities, it invites countries to compete with each other to attract economic activity and to favour ‘domestic’ companies. The OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative essentially seeks to close loopholes rather than to re-examine these fundamental problems. As a consequence, it is unlikely to generate a stable long-run tax system. We briefly outline some more fundamental alternative reforms.

This paper presents, analyses, and further develops the idea of a destination-based cash-flow tax (DBCFT). Its purpose is expositional: to describe the DBCFT, how it might work, what its effects would be and some of the challenges that its implementation would face. The paper starts by introducing the basic mechanics of the DBCFT before evaluating it against five criteria: economic efficiency, robustness to avoidance and evasion, ease of administration, fairness and stability. It does so both for the case of universal adoption by all countries and the more plausible case of unilateral adoption. The paper then looks closely at the application of DBCFT treatment to the financial sector, which is a familiar problem under the VAT but has been little considered under the DBCFT. Finally, the paper sets out some core implementation issues, and how they might be addressed. It also compares the implementation of a DBCFT with the economically equivalent reform option that introduces a broad-based, uniform rate VAT (or achieves the same effect through an existing VAT), and reduces taxes on payroll by the same proportion.

Transactions designed to avoid statutory provisions bear the legal risk that courts deem them unsuccessful. As this legal risk is a function of the approach courts adopt towards them, identifying and understanding it fully is a sine qua non requirement, without which one simply cannot assess the risk ex ante. Confidence in the robustness of such transactions is based partly on the fact that UK courts characterise transactions according to their legal substance, ignoring factors such as economic substance. Courts have developed an approach in the tax field, the so-called “Ramsay Approach”, which can lead them to look beyond legal substance, but the view seems to be held in some quarters that it cannot be applied outside the tax field. It is argued here that, once its true nature is properly understood, this approach not only can but actually has been applied in a number of corporate law cases.

Against the backdrop of the debate over the introduction of a fi nancial transaction tax (FTT) in the European Union, this Forum is dedicated to the discussion of issues concerning the implementation and impact of such a tax on the fi nancial sectors of the member states. Dorothea Schäfer regards as the main policy goal of an FTT to be the prospect of slowing down the mutually reinforcing and growing trends of an increasing number of derivative products and shorter holding periods. The FTT can therefore make an important contribution to preventing the decoupling of financial markets from the real economy. The paper by Stephan Schulmeister discusses the essential features of a general FTT that will ensure that the more short-term oriented and riskier a transaction is, the greater the effect of the FTT on transaction costs. John Vella identifies some commonly made claims about an FTT which are of questionable foundation and compares the FTT with some alternative taxes on the financial sector. Donato Masciandaro and Francesco Passarelli focus on how an FTT measure aimed at reducing fi nancial systemic risk can cause political distortions, leading to inefficient and ineffective policies. Finally, the paper by Ross Buckley analyses common myths, inaccuracies and untruths about the EU's proposed FTT.