Information design for global tax competition in a post-BEPS world

拟议的研究旨在根据经合组织、世界银行和货币基金组织等国际组织最近针对跨国企业避税做法开展的活动，对信息交流进行政策相关分析。分析将是理论性的，并通过世界银行直接参与监督和获取数据以及当前的专业知识和关于避税和信息不对称的讨论，直接了解当前的政策辩论和实践。信息不对称至关重要，因为各国政府有动机和机会利用信息不对称获取经济利益。政府可以通过吸引外国纳税人成为居民纳税人来增加税收。它可以通过诸如秘密税收裁决和离岸避税地等行动来这样做，这些行动为在其他国家避税提供了便利，同时利用其关于纳税人收入的私人信息来增加自己的税收。此外，这种情景为国家政府操纵与其他国家的任何信息共享提供了明确的激励。现有的信息交流协定也存在同样的问题。例如，联合国际避税信息中心（JITSIC）因参与人数有限而关闭，《外国账户税收合规法案》（FATCA）仅适用于美国。合作工具的私人性质进一步表明了各国之间普遍存在的信息不对称。就在几年前，世界银行和经合组织创建了向所有国家开放的税收透明度和信息交换全球论坛。然而，问题仍然是一样的，这种全球协议是否能够真正成为实现透明度的工作机制。本文的核心研究课题是信息不对称条件下的税收竞争。拟议的研究将旨在解决全球税收竞争中的信息透明度和不对称问题。现有的文献没有提供对这种情况的分析，因为它几乎完全是在信息完全的情况下发展起来的，政府的行动仅限于制定公开可见的税率。此外，税收竞争下的信息共享和设计问题迄今尚未得到解决。正如Keen和Ligthart（2006年）指出的那样，国家税务当局之间的信息共享是国际税务政策议程上的核心问题，但在公共财政文献中基本上没有引起注意。这一空白正是我的研究所要填补的。研究的结果将是模型，它将揭示全球合作打击避税的条件和局限性。它将能够预测各国对不同信息共享模式的反应。事实上，该模型将模拟世界银行作为全球信息交换设计者的角色。工作日程2017年-扩大理论和实践背景（文献综述、与主管讨论、参加世界银行专家会议、讨论BEPS行动计划）通过埃塞克斯的博士培训模块，获得理论和实证工作的最先进研究方法和模型的进一步培训;2018年-模型设计（与埃塞克斯和世行主管讨论，并参加世行讨论和专家会议）;2019年-使用世界银行数据库测试模型，校准模型; 2020年-与世界银行的主管和专家讨论模型的结果和发现。根据调查结果拟订关于信息管理的建议。

The proposed research aims to develop policy relevant analysis of information exchange in the context of recent activity of international organizations, namely OECD, WB (World Bank), and IMF, against tax avoidance practices of multinational enterprises. The analysis will be theoretical and directly informed by current policy debate and practice through the direct involvement of the WB in the supervision and access to data and current expertise and discussions on the tax avoidance and information asymmetry. Information asymmetry is of key importance since national governments have incentive and opportunity to exploit it for financial gain. A government can increase its tax revenues by attracting foreign taxpayers to become resident taxpayers. It can do so through actions such as secret tax rulings and offshore tax havens, which facilitate avoidance of taxation in other countries, while at the same time use its private information on the taxpayer's income to increase its own tax receipts. Moreover, such scenarios provide clear incentives to national government to manipulate any information sharing with other countries. Existing information exchange agreements bear the same problem. For example, the Joint International Tax Shelter Information Centre (JITSIC) is closed with limited participant numbers and the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is exclusive to USA. The private nature of the cooperation vehicles further demonstrates the prevalence of information asymmetry among countries. Only a couple years ago WB and OECD created the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes opened to all countries. However, the question is still the same, whether such global agreement can be really working mechanism to achieve transparency. The core of proposed research topic is tax competition under asymmetric information. The proposed research will aim to address the issue information transparency and asymmetry in global tax competition. The existing literature does not provide analysis of such scenarios as it developed almost entirely in settings with complete information and where government actions are restricted to the setting of publicly observable tax rates. Moreover, the issue of information sharing and design under tax competition has not been addressed thus far. As Keen and Ligthart (2006) noted that sharing information between national tax authorities is central issue on the international tax policy agenda, but has gone largely unnoticed in the public finance literature. This gap is what my proposed research aims to fill. The result of the research will be the model, which will reveal conditions and limitations of global collaboration against tax-avoidance. It will be able to predict countries' reaction on different patterns of information sharing. In fact the model will simulate the role of WB as a designer of global information exchange. I will further build on this basic framework as required by the policy debate.Schedule of work2017 - Expanding theoretical and practical background (literature review, discussing with supervisors, participating in meetings with experts from the World Bank and discussions on the Action Plan on BEPS). Gaining further training in state of the art research methods and models for theoretical and empirical work through the doctoral training modules in Essex;2018 - Designing of the model (in discussion with Essex and WB supervisors and participating the WB discussions and expertise);2019 - Testing the model using the Data Base of the World Bank, calibration of the model;2020 - Discussion of the model's results and findings with supervisors and experts of the World Bank. Development of recommendation on information management based on the findings.