Aggressive tax planning has become a sustainability problem, as governments have to cope with less tax revenue, which is crucial for investments in sustainable development goals. The OECD and the EU authorities have taken several initiatives against aggressive tax planning, such as the Action Plan against BEPS. However, these initiatives lack effectiveness, and aggressive tax planning is still omnipresent. We analyze the fight against aggressive corporate tax planning from a Real Option Theory perspective, in order to find an explanation for the difficult shift of companies’ aggressive tax planning strategies to more sustainable tax behavior. The Real Option Theory shows that, as long as the option to ‘delay’ the investment in sustainable tax behavior has too much value because the benefits of such investment are uncertain, companies will wait. Based on this new understanding, we suggest additional public policy interventions against aggressive tax planning. These interventions aim directly at reducing this real option value (of waiting).

中文翻译：

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可持续企业税收行为的实物期权方法

激进的税收筹划已成为一个可持续性问题，因为政府必须应对税收减少的问题，这对于投资于可持续发展目标至关重要。经合组织和欧盟当局已采取多项措施反对激进的税收筹划，例如针对 BEPS 的行动计划。然而，这些举措缺乏有效性，激进的税收筹划仍然无处不在。我们从实物期权理论的角度分析了对抗激进的公司税收筹划的斗争，以找到公司激进的税收筹划策略难以转变为更可持续的税收行为的解释。实物期权理论表明，只要“延迟”投资于可持续税收行为的期权价值太大，因为此类投资的收益不确定，企业就会等待。基于这一新认识，我们建议针对激进的税收筹划采取额外的公共政策干预措施。这些干预措施的直接目的是减少这种实物期权价值（等待）。