Publications

2015
Working Paper

Executives' Financial Preferences and Shareholder Tax Outcomes

By: Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Andreya M. Perez-Silva

We demonstrate that executives’ personal financial preferences impact both layers of shareholder taxes, corporate taxes and corporate payouts. We reconstruct executives’ insider equity portfolios to quantify their personal incentives and analyze stock sales that reveal... View Details

Keywords: Executives; Capital Gain; Dividends; Effective Tax Rate; Tax Avoidance; Taxation; Management Teams; Business and Shareholder Relations

28 Oct 2014
News

Tax Avoidance and Living the Dream

August 2009
Article

Corporate Tax Avoidance and Firm Value

By: Mihir Desai and D. Dharmapala

Keywords: Taxation; Business Ventures; Value

31 Mar 2017
News

Studies links institutional investing to corporate tax avoidance

07 Sep 2010
News

U.S. tech firms shop abroad to avoid taxes

January 2006
Article

Corporate Tax Avoidance and High Powered Incentives

By: Mihir A. Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala

Keywords: Taxation; Motivation and Incentives

21 May 2013
News

Apple Avoided Taxes on Overseas Billions, Senate Panel Finds

01 Dec 2011
News

A Modest Tax Proposal

in the United States. Those profits are now subject to a 35 percent corporate tax rate, but the tax can be totally avoided as long as American corporations hold the profits in... View Details

Keywords: Robert C. Pozen; tax holidays

March 2009
Article

Earnings Management and Corporate Tax Shelters, and Book-Tax Alignment

By: Mihir Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala

This paper reviews recent evidence analyzing the link between earnings management and corporate tax avoidance and considers the implications for how policymakers should evaluate the financial reporting environment facing firms. A real-world tax shelter is dissected to... View Details

Keywords: Earnings Management; Taxation; Financial Reporting; Business and Shareholder Relations

07 Apr 2008
Research & Ideas

The Debate over Taxing Foreign Profits

"expatriate" from the United States and reincorporate in tax havens in the Caribbean several years ago to avoid the U.S. tax system, their chief executives were... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

01 Mar 2011
News

Tax and Grow

© politicalcartoons.com/Jimmy Margulies With the U.S. economic recovery stuck in low gear and traditional monetary and fiscal policy options seemingly exhausted, now is a good time to consider more novel approaches to stimulating growth. In particular, Congress should... View Details

Keywords: Mihir A. Desai; Administration of Economic Programs; Government; Corporate, Subsidiary, and Regional Managing Offices; Management

20 Dec 2006
Op-Ed

Investors Hurt by Dual-Track Tax Reporting

mortgage application differently. Indeed, research shows just that: Corporate tax avoidance is not valued by the market unless the firms are well-governed. The actors in various corporate scandals, including... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai

07 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron

building on intense lobbying to encourage further domestic deregulation and limit federal oversight of the energy industry, Skilling encouraged Enron executives to exploit to the hilt recent Securities and Exchange Commission rule changes as well as then-current View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

14 Dec 2010
Op-Ed

Tax US Companies to Spur Spending

individuals who incorporate for business purposes. Implementing such a tax would require measures to prevent some unintended consequences. A large fraction of corporations' excess cash--as much as two-thirds, according to some... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir A. Desai

15 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Why Americans Voted for an Income Tax

We can be forgiven, especially this time of year, for questioning a decision our predecessors made just over a century ago. In the 1910s, Americans decided to make personal and corporate income taxes a permanent feature of the United... View Details

Keywords: by Matthew C. Weinzierl

18 Jul 2005
Research & Ideas

Time to Rethink the Corporate Tax System?

tax avoidance is good for shareholders is the fact that tax avoidance opportunities require obfuscation and, consequently, open the door to... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen

22 Feb 2018
News

Economists cannot avoid making value judgments

Book Review

Review of Global Tax Fairness edited by Thomas Pogge and Krishen Mehta

By: Matthew C. Weinzierl

This timely volume (Global Tax Fairness, edited by Thomas Pogge and Krishen Mehta) on the proper taxation of multinational enterprises argues that several feasible, near-term reforms could substantially narrow the scope for tax avoidance by closing information gaps,... View Details

Keywords: Taxation; Global Range; Policy; Fairness