LL.M. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

No description available.

In 2000, two international organizations—the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Organization for Economic Development (OECD)—attempted to attack the problems of money laundering and tax evasion through coercive soft law. Both organizations attempted to induce state compliance with international standards by placing noncompliant states on publicly available blacklists. The FATF blacklist, Non-Cooperative Countries or Territories, documented states that failed to implement international anti-money laundering standards and the OECD blacklist, Uncooperative Tax Havens, documented states that failed to implement international tax information-sharing agreements. This report examines the Cayman Islands’ quick compliance with these two international efforts. The report hypothesizes that the Cayman Islands’ complied quickly with both the FATF and OECD initiatives because the Cayman Islands’ had a strong financial institutional capacity and a high level of reputational risk from not complying. The report develops a methodology for testing this theory against other jurisdictions placed on both of the original FATF and OECD blacklists. The testing reveals that while financial institutional capacity and reputational risk may have contributed to the Cayman Islands’ and other states’ compliance with the FATF and OECD initiatives, these factors were not determinative. The report concludes that better metrics for state institutional capacity and reputational risk are needed to accurately measure states’ compliance with the FATF and OECD regimes. / text

Offshore jurisdictions attempt to attract foreign capital to themselves by having lower financial regulatory requirements than other jurisdictions. By examining the literature and the latest data on financial flows, the thesis attempts to identify the sources of the powerful systematic causes and effects of Offshore. It does this by disaggregating elements of Offshore that are normally conflated. An eclectic theory based on elements of liberal international theory and world-system structuralism is constructed in order to clarify the role of Offshore in the international economy. The conclusions are that Offshore is an integral part of the current global economic system; that further research may reveal that Offshore serves hegemonic interests; that regulatory competition is likely to remain a part of the international economy for the foreseeable future; and that, by finding common interests among hegemons and others, the invidious Offshore element of secrecy has a serious chance of being curtailed so that systematic stability can be increased.

Offshore jurisdictions attempt to attract foreign capital to themselves by having lower financial regulatory requirements than other jurisdictions. By examining the literature and the latest data on financial flows, the thesis attempts to identify the sources of the powerful systematic causes and effects of Offshore. It does this by disaggregating elements of Offshore that are normally conflated. An eclectic theory based on elements of liberal international theory and world-system structuralism is constructed in order to clarify the role of Offshore in the international economy. The conclusions are that Offshore is an integral part of the current global economic system; that further research may reveal that Offshore serves hegemonic interests; that regulatory competition is likely to remain a part of the international economy for the foreseeable future; and that, by finding common interests among hegemons and others, the invidious Offshore element of secrecy has a serious chance of being curtailed so that systematic stability can be increased. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

International tax planning is a phenomenon of recent years. One of the ways suitable for a tax optimization is the use of the area bearing the sign tax haven, which is also the subject of this thesis. The possibility of optimizing is demonstrated on a specific model example of American company optimizing through the jurisdiction of the Netherlands, which is often used for this purpose. Optimization areas included in this thesis are dividends, interest and royalties. Then based on the creation of optimization structures is shown how a company can achieve tax savings and increase net profit. Work is divided into six chapters. The first chapter builds a theoretical framework. The second chapter deals with international investment flows and the special position of the Netherlands in this area. The third chapter examines the main aspects that make tax havens attractive. The fourth chapter describes the economic, business and tax environment in the Netherlands. The fifth chapter is created by the analysis of optimization for a specific model example. The final chapter discusses current initiatives of the OECD, EU and US in the fight against tax havens.

Recent empirical literature has provided greater insight into the strategies and the extent of multinational companies’ tax avoidance. Simultaneously, in the last decades, the corporate tax rate has gradually decreased in most developed countries, often in the interest of attracting foreign investment. In 2013, Sweden decreased its corporate tax from 26.3% to 22%. This paper is an empirical study of the effect of the corporate tax change on Swedish multinational companies’ tax avoidance. By using a difference-in-differences model, and a sample of firm-level financial data from 19 821 domestic and multinational Swedish companies covering the period 2011 – 2015, a regression analysis is performed to estimate the effect of the policy change. Irrespective of empirical specification, I find no statistically significant effect of the tax change on tax avoidance.

This dissertation studies how organized crime and corruption can penetrate the legal economy. In the first chapter I document the infiltration of organized crime in public procurement auctions in the aftermath of natural disasters. I focus on recent earthquakes that occurred in Italy between 2008 and 2016 and I utilize investigative data on participation in procurement auctions of firms associated with the mafia (in short, "mafia firms''). I show that criminal firms increase their participation in public procurement auctions in emergency-designated municipalities, particularly after relief status is declared over. Emergency status leads to a temporary increase in monitoring efforts, but a permanent positive shock to affected municipalities' reconstruction budgets, thus explaining the lagged effect. Using information on awarding procedures, I show that after the emergency the participation of mafia firms increases only in auctions with minimum discretion, suggesting it is not the result of collusion with local administrators. In Chapter 2, I investigate whether windfalls from natural resources increase corruption and how this varies across countries with different institutions. I utilize leaked information on the beneficiaries of secret offshore entities to construct a measure of malfeasance. I find that countries respond to a rise in the price of the commodities they export with increased incorporation of offshore entities in tax havens. However, such a relationship exists only for autocratic regimes. In Chapter 3, I develop a theoretical model to explain the role of political brokers in mediating clientelistic transactions between parties and voters. Brokers enjoy an informative advantage over parties: they observe the electorate's political preferences as well as their need for a private good (hospital beds) provided by the government. A party hires the broker to make a deal with the voters. The broker insures them against the risk of not receiving the private good when in need (sick) in exchange for their vote. The presence of the broker reduces aggregate welfare if parties focus on the electoral benefits coming from the provision of the private good and thus reduces the amount of public good (schools) below the optimal level. On the other hand welfare increases if private goods are delivered to citizens in need who would have not received them, had the broker not been present.

This paper examines the relevance of tax havens for China by determining which tax havens are important for China and to what extent. Furthermore, the motives for Chinese tax haven activity are analysed and compared to the motives of Western companies that primarily use tax havens for the purpose of tax arbitrage. An analysis of two listed Chinese companies, a private and a state-owned entity (SOE), exemplifies how Chinese businesses incorporate tax havens into their business structure and discusses differences between the motives of private and state-owned companies. The magnitude of tax havens found in the business structures emphasise the importance of tax havens for Chinese companies, irrespective of whether the company is an SOE or private, or conducts its business in China or internationally. While the reasons why the state-influenced company incorporated tax havens into their structure seemed to be related to legitimate business motives, the motives behind the structure of the private company seemed questionable. The assessment furthermore confirms that China’s weak institutional framework and restricting business environment is a major push factor and gives companies plenty of incentive to go offshore. / Die Relevanz von Steueroasen für China