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AbstractThis paper argues that the ability to enforce taxes on offshore income may shape the redistributional properties of the tax system through two channels. First, it mechanically raises tax progressivity for given parameters of the tax system because high-income taxpayers own most of the offshore wealth. In the US, recent comprehensive reporting by offshore banks suggests the mechanical increase in average tax rates may be around 1.5 percentage points for the top 0.01 per cent and virtually zero below the top 1 per cent. Second, it may further raise tax progressivity by changing the trade-offs underlying optimal taxation in favour of higher taxation of top incomes.

This paper studies how the global minimum tax shapes national tax policies and welfare in a formal model of international tax competition with heterogeneous countries. The net welfare effect is generally ambiguous from the perspective of non-havens. On the one hand, the global minimum tax raises their welfare by curbing profit shifting, which boosts government revenue. One the other hand, it lowers their welfare by increasing equilibrium tax rates in havens, which transfers real resources from non-haven firms to haven governments. The net welfare effect is unambiguously positive when the global minimum rate is so high that profit shifting ends.

This paper studies how the global minimum tax shapes national tax policies and welfare in a formal model of international tax competition with heterogeneous countries. The net welfare effect is generally ambiguous from the perspective of non-havens. On the one hand, the global minimum tax raises their welfare by curbing profit shifting, which boosts government revenue. One the other hand, it lowers their welfare by increasing equilibrium tax rates in havens, which transfers real resources from non-haven firms to haven governments. The net welfare effect is unambiguously positive when the global minimum rate is so high that profit shifting ends.

This paper documents that tax havens play a prominent role in international service trade and investigates the nature of this role. We employ a firm-level dataset with detailed information about service trade and foreign affiliates for virtually all multinational firms in Germany, which allows us to approximately distinguish trade between related and unrelated parties. We find that the service trade of tax havens partly reflects genuine specialization in service industries, which suggests that institutional features such as low tax rates, secrecy and low regulatory standards create a comparative advantage in service production. We also find that trade in service categories such as intellectual property (patents and trademarks) and headquarter services (administration, management and advertising) partly reflects mispriced affiliate trade serving to shift profits to tax havens. We argue, however, that the loss of government revenue resulting from this type of corporate tax evasion is likely to be modest.

Did the financial crisis in 2007–2008 spread from distressed banks to households through a contraction of the credit supply? We study this question with a dataset that contains observations on all accounts in Danish banks as well as comprehensive information about individual account holders and banks. We document that banks exposed to the financial crisis reduced their lending relative to nonexposed banks, which in turn caused a significant decrease in the borrowing and spending of their customers. The effects were persistent: borrowing remained lower through the postcrisis years and spending foregone during the crisis was not recovered. (JEL D12, D14, E21, E32, G01, G21)