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

August 2009
Article

Corporate Tax Avoidance and Firm Value

By: Mihir Desai and D. Dharmapala

Keywords: Taxation; Business Ventures; Value

January 2006
Article

Corporate Tax Avoidance and High Powered Incentives

By: Mihir A. Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala

Keywords: Taxation; Motivation and Incentives

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

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 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

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

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

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

28 Aug 2009
Working Paper Summaries

The Impact of Private Equity Ownership on Portfolio Firms’ Corporate Tax Planning

Keywords: by Brad Badertscher, Sharon P. Katz & Sonja Olhoft Rego; Financial Services

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

2009
Working Paper

The Impact of Private Equity Ownership on Portfolio Firms' Corporate Tax Planning

By: Brad Badertscher, Sharon P. Katz and Sonja Olhoft Rego

This study investigates whether private equity (PE) firms influence the tax practices of their portfolio firms. Prior research documents that PE firms create economic value in portfolio firms through effective governance, financial, and operational engineering. Given... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Investment Portfolio; Corporate Governance; Taxation; Ownership Stake; Value Creation

2025
Working Paper

Tax Planning, Illiquidity, and Credit Risks: Evidence from DeFi Lending

By: Lisa De Simone, Peiyi Jin and Daniel Rabetti

This study establishes a plausible causal link between tax-planning-induced illiquidity and credit risks in lending markets. Exploiting an exogenous tax shock imposed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on cryptocurrency gains, along with millions of transactions in... View Details

Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Taxation; Financial Liquidity; Credit; Financing and Loans; Financial Markets

24 Jul 2014
Op-Ed

Reform Tax Law to Keep US Firms at Home

Editor's Note. Given a veritable flood over the last year of corporate "inversions"—US companies that reincoporate in other countries to take advantage of favorable tax rates and business regulations—lawmakers in Washington D.C.... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai; Pharmaceutical

September 2, 2020
Article

How to Pay for Public Option Without Tax Hike

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Richard Boxer

A bipartisan combination of the two parties’ most popular initiatives can expand health care coverage, significantly reduce costs, and enable freedom of choice, without raising taxes. Along the way, we can revitalize competition between public and private plans. Our... View Details

Keywords: Health Insurance; Public Option; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Cost Management; United States

2021
Working Paper

Elusive Safety: The New Geography of Capital Flows and Risk

By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Ruth Judson and Tim Schmidt-Eisenlohr

A confidential dataset with industry-level disaggregation of U.S. cross-border claims and liabilities, shows U.S. securities to be increasingly intermediated by tax-haven-financial-centers (THFC) and less regulated funds. These securities are risky, in... View Details

Keywords: Tax Havens; Financial Centers; Geography Of Flows; Profit Shifting; Tax Avoidance; Risk; Safe Assets; Hetergeneous Firms; Endogenous Entry; Endogenous Monitoring; Regulatory Arbitrage; Assets; Safety; Risk and Uncertainty; Capital; Global Range