Tax havens in pandemic environments (COVID-19)

• Zócimo Campos Jaque
• Juan Tapia Gertosio

Keywords: pandemic, tax expenditure, tax haven

Abstract

With more than 7.7 million affected by the coronavirus worldwide and more than 422,700 deceased as a result of this virus as of June 2020 (The Financial Times Limited, 2020), the unemployment figures are fiercely affecting the youngest the planet and the idea of a global recession is reinforced. This makes the fiscal income of the countries of great importance to solve the expenses and associated public policies. Therefore, this study seeks to analyze one of the practices that seriously affect tax collection: that companies use transfer prices to pay taxes using subsidiaries in countries with low tax rates (tax havens), damaging the tax income of the country of origin . For this analysis, the multilevel econometric model of Bartelsman and Beetsma (2003) is used as methodology. The results obtained suggest that multinational companies do not faithfully present their financial information in the countries of origin, concluding that the true profit is not reported, transferring it to tax havens via transfer prices. It is concluded that the reports delivered by multinational companies to public entities do not report real benefits or gains, since these benefits or gains are transferred to jurisdictions or countries with lower tax rates.

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