Replication data for: Comparing UK Tax Returns of Foreign Multinationals to Matched Domestic Firms

In this paper, I use confidential UK corporate tax returns data to explore whether there are systematic differences in the amount of taxable profits that multinational and domestic companies report. I find that the ratio of taxable profits to total assets reported by foreign multinational subsidiaries is one-half that of comparable domestic standalones. The majority of the difference is attributable to the fact that a higher proportion of foreign multinational subsidiaries report zero taxable profits. I document how the estimated difference is related to profit shifting and show that using accounting data leads to much smaller estimates of the difference.

本文采用英国机密企业纳税申报数据，探究跨国企业与本土企业申报的应纳税利润规模是否存在系统性差异。研究发现，外国跨国子公司申报的应纳税利润与总资产之比，仅为可比本土独立企业的二分之一。该差异的主要成因在于，申报应纳税利润为零的外国跨国子公司占比显著更高。本文还阐明了估算所得差异与利润转移的关联，并证实，若使用会计数据，则会大幅低估该差异的规模。