Multinational Companies And Tax Avoidance

Multinational Corporation - business enterprise with manufacturing, sales, or service subsidiaries in one or more foreign countries, also known as a transnational or international corporation. These corporations originated early in the 20th century and proliferated after World War II.

The role of multinational companies (MNEs) in international trade has become very great importance in the last 20 years. This is in large part to the increase in the integration of national economies and technological progress, in particular in the area of communication. The growing importance of MNEs develop complex issue of taxation on both the tax administration as well as MNEs, since the regulations of each country in the taxation of MNEs can be considered in isolation, but should be considered in the wider international importance (Grimwade, 2000).

Companies in the US are finding clever deceiving ways to get what they want. Many companies like Google are investing offshore to avoid American taxes. Others like the company Monsanto uses

However, the companies only have to pay the U.S. tax for foreign revenues once they bring the profits back to the United States. As a result of these current tax laws, U.S. companies that seek to avoid high corporate tax rates hold their foreign earned profits overseas. “It just makes no sense to pay a substantial tax on it,” said Joseph Kennedy, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (Rubin, R.). It is far too easy for an IT corporation to create a patent in a foreign country and direct revenue to a corporation within that country, thus avoiding the much higher U.S. tax rates. According to Joint Committee on Taxation estimates, the lost revenue is increasing over time as corporations find even more creative ways to make their U.S. profits look like offshore income (Richards, K., & Craig, J.). As result, multinational American corporations have as much as $2 trillion held in overseas subsidiaries and if brought into the United States with the current tax laws, the federal government could benefit by nearly $50 billion per year.

The main objective of many companies is to minimize their tax obligations. Jeffers (2014) discussed the reason of why companies adopt tax inversion strategies. The researcher indicated that the income maximization is a major reason of companies attempting to reduce their tax liability (pp. 100-101). Tax inversion strategies provide companies an advantage to lower income tax rate. Today, U.S. corporations renounce its U.S. citizenship and move to low-tax countries. Companies that reincorporate oversees are not obligated to pay U.S. taxes on earning income (p. 99). Many countries implement tax competition strategies to attract and retain businesses. Well-known companies, such as Exxon Mobil, Hewlett Packard, Tyco, General Electric, PepsiCo, etc. take benefits of tax shelter opportunities overseas (p. 102). Other benefits of the jurisdiction abroad are flexible banking laws and simplified litigation processes.

However, the introduction of such a law becomes increasingly difficult when the companies being questioned are some of the largest and wealthiest in the world. In order to truly understand the stature of these companies, one would need to look into some of the statistics regarding them. Remarkably, according to Al Jazeera America “the largest 500 U.S. companies would owe an estimated $620 billion in U.S. taxes” if they had to declare all their overseas stockpiles, of around $2.1 trillion (“Al Jazeera America”). In addition, it found that “three-quarters of the 500 biggest companies utilize tax havens”. The top three offenders included Apple, General Electric and Microsoft. In many cases according to the report, the money is not being utilized to improve foreign economies. By this they mean to say that, U.S. businesses were not using their overseas profit to build factories and employ individuals. Instead, the overseas profit was a result of accounting tricks purposely implemented to benefit the business alone. To put all of this in perspective, the United States is losing billions of dollars to foreign economies. These taxes are being introduced into countries such as Ireland and Luxembourg. In other words the money that should be invested in the United States of America on public services, is being

Petrenko. A. Corporate social responsibility [Power Point Slides]. Retrieved from Lecture Notes Online Web site: https://moodle.yorku.ca/moodle/course/view.php?id=39261

Americans may ponder the thought of struggling economy barely gaining momentum while corporations have witnessed some of the largest quarterly profits ever recorded. The driving force behind the extreme profits gained by many corporations is simply put as tax inversion. Tax inversion is nothing more than an American firm combining with a foreign firm in a country with beneficial and lucrative tax laws (Financial Times, 2014). The American headquarters will now be moved to the new foreign firm where they will enjoy the lower taxes and evade the taxation of the United States government (Financial Times, 2014). More and more American firms have been taking advantage of inversion while still being able to enjoy sales in the American market.

The main argument comes for allowing tax evasion is that corporate tax evasion makes products cheaper for consumers. While this is a possibility, it also doesn’t make sense. The whole reason corporations evade taxes in the first place, is to make as much profit as possible. So why would these corporations

The chapter one of Corporations and Citizen (Crane, A, Matten, D, & Moon, J. ,2008) is the introduction of the whole book. The authors have an assumption that it is becoming progressively possible that corporations not only have economic, legal and social roles but, also political role or significance. They assume corporations involves in politics much more than before and participated more in governmental and inter- governmental rule-making. Then, they turn to the concept of citizenship so as to fit these political views of corporations. They have set out their perspective on the core concept of citizenship and elaborated on the approach taken in the follow part of the book.

The centre of the debate about the CSR is the nature and extent of corporate obligations that extend beyond the economic and legal responsibilities of the firm. “The idea of social responsibilities supposes that the corporation has not only economic and legal obligations, but also certain responsibilities to society which extend beyond these obligations” (McGuire, 1963: 144). The issue is therefore critical for the firm as it is in the business’s long-term self-interest to be socially responsible. If Chiquita wants to have a healthy climate in which to function in the future, it must take actions now to ensure its long-term viability. Ultimately it will benefit the company by “winning the public” because the public believe firms should take on social responsibility.

There is an ongoing debate on the relationship of tax avoidance with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethical behaviour of companies. Specifically, corporate social responsibility can be defined as companies undertake the responsibility for social welfare and development (Matten and Moon, 2008). For ethical behaviour, it is referred to govern the actions of individuals and organizations in the business under contemporary standards (Epstein, 1998). Moreover, this is the difference between tax avoidance, which companies use appropriate methods to reduce the amount of tax within the law, and tax evasion, which can be defined as illegal to reduce taxes (Hasseldine and Morris, 2013). According to US Treasury (2009), each year the US government may lose more than $345 billion revenue because of a variety of tax avoidance. Moreover, the UK government also faces the problem of losing tax, at £40 billion each year (HM Revenue and Customs, 2010). In recent years, an increasing number of governments, media, and non-government organizations claim that corporate tax avoidance is not conducive to the development of society and ethical behaviour of enterprises. The aims of this essay are to research the motivations of corporate tax avoidance, and discusses to a large extent corporate social responsibility and ethical behaviour of firms is in conflict with tax avoidance, even though they have some consistency. The first section of the essay will research the motivations of

Intercompany transactions could occur across national borders, it would lead MNC companies to get more exposure to the differences of the tax regulations between countries. This might lead MNC companies to set up their objective to minimize their taxes through the use of discretionary transfer prices. These issues are attracted the attention of the member of the U.S. senate, foreign governments and international organization such as the OECD, G20 and European Union (EU).

The actions of multinational corporations (MNCs), which derive from their morally dubious goals, may be completely legitimate within a capitalist society. One of these actions that will be examined in this essay is the use of tax havens, as a way of avoiding higher tax liability. This paper will utilise the case study of Apple’s tax avoidance, in examining the legitimation of a company’s goal of profit maximisation, a goal that is against the moral/social consensus

There is an ongoing debate that the relationship of tax avoidance with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethical behaviour of companies. Specifically, corporate social responsibility can be defined as companies undertake the responsibility for social welfare and development (Matten and Moon, 2008). For ethical behaviour, it is referred to govern the actions of individuals and organizations in the business under contemporary standards (Epstein, 1987). Moreover, this is the difference between tax avoidance, which companies use suitable methods to reduce the amount of tax within the law, and tax evasion that illegally reduction of taxes (Hasseldine and Morris, 2013). According to US Treasury (2009), each year the US government may lose more than $345 billion revenue because a variety of tax avoidance. Moreover, the UK government also faces the problem of losing tax, with £40 billion each year (HM Revenue and Customs, 2010). In recent years, an increasing number of governments, media, and non-government organizations claim that corporate tax avoidance is not conducive to the development of society and ethical behaviour of enterprises. This essay will research into the motivations of corporate tax avoidance, and discusses to a large extent corporate social responsibility and ethical behaviour of firms is in conflict with tax avoidance, even though they have some consistency. The first section of the essay will research the motivations of corporate tax avoidance. In the