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The purpose of this paper is to examine long‐term income tax liability for Chinese public corporations from 1998 to 2007. It also studies the factors that are associated with Chinese firms' long‐run effective tax rates.

The paper uses the measurement of long‐run effective tax rate, developed by Dyreng et al., which is measured as the sum of taxes paid over ten years divided by the sum of pretax book income over those same ten years. This paper is an empirical study using the financial report data collected from China stock market financial statement database and corporate ownership structure change from SINA Finance database. The tests include both univariate and multivariate tests.

The paper's findings are: ten‐year effective tax rates are considerably lower than the statutory tax rate; ten‐year effective tax rates vary significantly across industries and geographic areas; profitability, firm size, capital structure, and capital intensity are all associated with ten‐year effective tax rates; corporate ownership structures, i.e. tradable vs non‐tradable shares, are related to ten‐year effective tax rates.

Given that corporate ownership has changed dramatically in China in recent years, future studies should be conducted to explore the association between effective tax rates and ownership changes.

The paper is of interest to the policy makers, corporate managements, and academics, who seek to examine corporate income tax burden and the factors associated with tax rates over the long term. Given that corporate ownership has changed dramatically in China in recent year, future studies should be conducted to explore the association between effective tax rates and ownership changes.

The paper differs from Dyreng et al.'s paper in 2007. While Dyreng et al. conduct a univariate analysis on the association between firm characteristics and long‐run effective tax rates, this paper employs multivariate regression models to examine what factors are associated with long‐run effective tax rates. Second, this paper examines the relationship between corporate ownerships and effective tax rates.

It is argued within this paper that domestic rates, which represent an important and significant source of local government revenue for district councils in Northern Ireland, should be reformed. There are currently issues pertaining to the present system which adversely affect both fairness and equity. The rating system for both domestic and non‐domestic property has its origins in the early nineteenth century, when the basis of assessment was centred on hypothetical rental values. It is a contention of this paper that the use of annual rental values for domestic property taxation is no longer tenable owing principally to the lack of open market rental evidence and the transparency of the system. Given the absence of regular revaluations, significant disparities and inequities are now inherent in the rating system which can only be addressed by undertaking a further revaluation based on capital values. This paper examines, at both the macro and micro levels, the impact of the assessment lag on effective tax rates and the effect of a change in the basis of the tax.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of institutional environment and inside ownership on the tax reporting practices of Chinese listed firms.

It is an empirical study using a sample of Chinese listed firms for eight years of time periods between 1998 and 2005.

This study finds that in Chinese provinces with more developed institutions, firms have higher effective tax rates; however, firms with inside ownership in these regions have lower effective tax rates. Further analysis shows that the above results hold only for non‐state‐owned firms.

The paper presents the first study of the impact of inside ownership and institutional environment on corporate effective tax rate in China.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

A systematic assessment of multinational enterprise (MNE) tax minimisation strategies at the firm level is difficult. This paper aims to present systematic evidence for Ireland of tax minimisation strategies at both an aggregate and individual firm level. The paper uses Apple and Google as its case studies.

The paper is based on 31 US intellectual property (IP)-intensive MNEs with substantial operations in Ireland. Financial and other data including tax payments were extracted from Form 10K and filings in Companies Registration Office in Ireland.

The paper develops three different measures of effective tax rates and that tax strategies have resulted in effective tax rates lower than the nominal US tax rate and far lower than those published in company accounts. Although two-thirds of profits are earned outside the USA, around 70 per cent of corporate tax is paid in the USA.

The paper relies on data from a subset of MNEs operating in Ireland. The paper also uses publicly available data which may not be available for all firms.

The findings have implications for European Union (EU) tax policy and tax revenues in countries where MNEs operate. The paper also has implications for industrial policy based on attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

The study has implications not only for the equitable distribution of corporate tax payments and income distribution but also especially for a tax-based industrial policy.

MNE tax strategies, although of considerable public interest, are often obscure and poorly understood. The paper is original in providing a detailed examination of MNE tax strategies at the firm level and discussing some implications from a public policy perspective.

This study aims to explore the evidence of the probability of firms’ tax avoidance and the downward convergence trend of national statutory tax rates and firms’ effective tax rates.

This research employs exploratory data analysis using interactive data manipulation and visualization tools, namely, R with SparkR, dplyr, ggplot2 and googleVis (GeoChart and Motion Chart) packages. This analysis is based on the world-scale accounting data of all listed firms from 148 countries spanning 30 years.

The results reveal the following: three types of evidences on probability of firms’ tax avoidance, showing a non-random distribution of firms’ effective tax rates and return on assets, cross-sectional variation of firms’ effective tax rates in each country, and the trend of difference between effective tax rates and statutory tax rates, and the downward convergence trend of statutory tax rates and firms’ effective tax rates.

The results highlight the prominent issues of world-scale tax avoidance and tax rate competition and facilitate a collaborative discussion between laymen and professionals using objective evidence.

A novel methodology is adopted through the visualization of world-scale accounting data, which can facilitate a new perspective, revealing unexpected patterns and trends in otherwise hidden information. This study also highlights the importance of global consideration of firms’ tax avoidance and tax rate competition, using objective evidence.

The purpose of this paper is to test the economic theory that product market competition should enhance firm performance in the US corporate tax management setting. It identifies one mechanism through which corporate management can improve firm performance. The paper also identifies business conditions that may facility or impede effective corporate tax management.

The paper tests the relationship between product market competition and corporate tax efficiency using large archival data. The primary data source is COMPUSTAT, which contains annual and quarterly accounting data for US public firms. Other data sources include accounting comparability data generously shared by Professor Vedi.

The paper finds that firms in competitive industries are more efficient in managing taxes. Specifically, the paper documents that firms in competitive industries exhibit lower effective tax rates than their non-competitive counterparts. Furthermore, the paper finds that the positive link between competition and the efficiency of tax management is much stronger for firms with lower cash flow volatility and for firms with fewer industry investment opportunities. The lack of financial statement comparability may weaken this link.

Tax laws vary greatly from country to country. Readers should interpret the results within the US tax environments.

Results in this paper have implications for multinational corporations that are interested in investing and doing business in the USA.

This paper sheds light on how competition influences firm performance through efficient tax management, a specific mechanism through which competition improves firm performance. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study provides the first documentation of how product market competition affects tax planning for US publicly traded companies.

Our study concentrates exclusively on the domestic effective tax rate (ETR), with the purpose of finding and characterizing their financial determinants. Using data on almost 5,000 US companies between fiscal years 2003 and 2010, we use regression analysis to find that the domestic ETR is affected by company size (as measured by sales), the extent to which the company is leveraged, level of fixed assets intensity, and the state of the economy. In addition, we find that domestic ETRs are also affected by the company’s level of internationality, which counterintuitively implies that the greater the company’s international activity, the less domestic taxes it pays for every dollar of US income. Both financial managers and policy makers can use our findings to reduce tax liabilities domestically, and to improve corporate tax regulations. While several attempts are made in the literature to compare ETRs of corporations that reside in different geographic locations, this is the first to characterize ETR determinants.

This chapter examines how public attitudes and judgments about tax fairness reflect distributive justice rules about proportionality/contributions, needs, and equality; fairness issues that influence voluntary tax compliance (Hofmann, Hoelzl, & Kirchler, 2008; Spicer & Lundstedt, 1976). Most public polls and some prior research indicate the general public considers progressive income tax rates as fairer than flat tax rates, a reflection of the Needs rule of distributive justice theory; our 1,138 participants respond similarly. However, two-thirds of our politically representative sample of the American public actually assign “fair shares” of income taxes consistently with fairness-as-proportionality above an exempt amount of income, consistent with the Contributions rule of Equity Theory. We argue experimental assignments of fair shares of income taxes can best be understood as a combination of the Needs rule, applied by exempting incomes below the poverty line from income taxation (via current standard deductions) and taxing incomes above this exempt amount at a single tax rate (i.e., a flat-rate tax) consistent with the Proportionality/Contributions rule. Viewed in combination, these two distributive justice rules explain the tax fairness judgments of 89% of our sample and indicate surprising general agreement about what constitutes a fair share of income taxes that should be paid by US citizens from the 5th percentile to the 95th percentile of the income distribution. The joint application of these fairness rules indicates how seemingly competing, partisan distributive justice concerns can inform our understanding of social attitudes about tax fairness across income classes.

This paper examines the relationship between environmental uncertainty and tax avoidance at the firm level. We posit that managers faced with more uncertain environments are likely to engage in more tax avoidance activities. We find a significant and negative relationship between environmental uncertainty and effective tax rates, and our results persist through a battery of robust checks. We further find that managerial ability mitigates the above relationship. Moreover, we find that small, highly leveraged, and innovative firms operating in uncertain environments engage in more tax avoidance.