Multinational corporations, stateless income and tax havens

The corporate income tax system is not broken. It is true that some multinational corporations do not pay as much tax in their host economies as their consumers and voters in those economies might expect. Yet this does not necessarily imply any wrongdoing on the part of those corporations. As Kleinbard makes clear, multinational corporations are fully compliant with the law of the land in those economies where they operate and the governments of those economies have been unwilling to change the international income tax norms and tax architecture. 

It is in this environment that fiscal illusion can be deployed to increase the tax burden on corporations. Yet there is no evidence to support the view that the revenue already collected by corporate income tax has declined in recent decades. There is no evidence to support the view that the corporate income tax base has been eroded in recent years. There is no evidence to support the view that a decline in corporate tax revenue has contributed to current budget deficits. If anything it is clear that expenditure decisions, not decreased revenue, has contributed to these deficits. 

Nonetheless, the stateless income doctrine may be used as a catalyst for re-writing the corporate income tax system. In the same way that an old tax is a good tax, so an old tax system is likely to be a good tax system. If one were the accept Kleinbard’s argument at face value, then governments would need to modify substantially how corporate income tax works and various norms underpinning international double taxation agreements in order to redefine stateless income as being sourced in either the UK or the US (or indeed in any other economy). 

The question that needs to be answered is this: ‘What would be the consequences of expanding the definition of source for corporate income tax purposes?’ At present ‘stateless’ income is not stateless at all, it is simply not UK- or US-source income. Stateless income is not some form of economic rent, as Kleinbard would have us believe. Rent can be taxed with impunity. To the extent that stateless income is really a return on the development and ownership of intellectual property, then increasing taxation will have allocative efficiency consequences. At the same time it would also adversely affect the Irish and Dutch tax bases. It is known, however, that multinational corporations add value to both their home economies and their host economies. Tax havens add value by allowing multinationals to reduce their tax liabilities while increasing their investments in high-tax economies. An increase in their tax burdens would reduce those levels of investment, leading to reduced employment opportunities, reduced consumption and reduced innovation. 

It is not clear that tampering with the tried and tested norms of corporate income tax to (possibly) generate more corporate income tax revenue while reducing the corporate income tax collected in foreign economies, and possibly reducing investment at home, employment at home and consumption at home, is good policy.