Working Paper

The Global Minimum Tax

Niels Johannesen
CESifo, Munich, 2022

CESifo Working Paper No. 9527

This paper studies how the global minimum tax shapes national tax policies and welfare in a formal model of international tax competition with heterogeneous countries. The net welfare effect is generally ambiguous from the perspective of non-havens. On the one hand, the global minimum tax raises their welfare by curbing profit shifting, which boosts government revenue. One the other hand, it lowers their welfare by increasing equilibrium tax rates in havens, which transfers real resources from non-haven firms to haven governments. The net welfare effect is unambiguously positive when the global minimum rate is so high that profit shifting ends.

CESifo Category
Public Finance
Monetary Policy and International Finance
Keywords: profit shifting, international taxation, global minimum tax, tax avoidance multinational firms