Steuern auf Verhandlungsbasis

Abstract

The bargaining power of multinational enterprises in negotiations with tax authorities is greater than that of firms that only operate domestically. This has two reasons. First, multinational enterprises are on average larger and more profitable than domestic-only enterprises, generating more tax revenues for local tax authorities. Thus, if companies threaten to relocate abroad due to excessive tax burdens, the potential revenue loss to the tax authorities will be much higher, motivating greater concessions from the tax authorities. Second, multinationals are more credibly mobile, having much lower reallocation costs relative to domestic-only firms. Since multinational enterprises are already operating abroad, it is easier to outsource their remaining operations entirely. This makes the threat of emigration more credible and further increases the bargaining power of multinational enterprises. Egger, Strecker and Zoller-Rydzek (2018) show that these two factors lead to significantly lower effective tax rates on multinational companies. Using French company data, they find that the average multinational enterprise has an effective tax rate that is more than 6 percentage points lower that of comparable domestic-only firms. About half of this effect can be attributed to their higher mobility while the other half is due to the larger size of these companies.