Base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) undermines tax revenues collection and raises public discontent in times when the tax burden has increased significantly for households in most developed economies. In addition, new forms of profit shifting related to intangible investment have emerged rapidly along the traditional use of transfer pricing and debt shifting by multinational companies. In this paper, using worldwide company level data for the period 2004-2013, we demonstrate that the sectoral differences in profit shifting are a serious concern from a welfare and policy perspectives. Sectors performing more profit shifting lower their average cost of capital and are thus able to attract more investment to the detriment of sectors less able to dodge taxes. We develop a multilevel model and provide indirect evidence of the welfare costs caused by profit shifting by estimating the cross-sectoral variance of semi-elasticity of declared profit. We also demonstrate that having a larger share of intangible assets is not per se related to more profit shifting and that it may point instead to cross-sectoral differences. Finally, we detect almost no financial shifting and find that the largest part of profit shifting is done by means of transfer pricing.

中文翻译：

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利润转移与产业异质性

在大多数发达经济体的家庭税负显着增加的时期，基本侵蚀和利润转移（BEPS）会破坏税收收入，并引起公众不满。此外，与无形投资有关的新形式的利润转移已随着跨国公司对转移定价和债务转移的传统使用迅速出现。在本文中，我们使用2004-2013年全球公司层面的数据，从福利和政策的角度证明了利润转移的部门差异是一个严重的问题。利润转移更多的行业降低了其平均资本成本，因此能够吸引更多的投资，从而损害了逃税能力较弱的行业。我们建立了一个多层次的模型，并通过估计申报利润的半弹性的跨部门方差来提供由利润转移引起的福利成本的间接证据。我们还证明，拥有更大份额的无形资产本身与更多的利润转移无关，而是可能指向跨部门的差异。最后，我们发现几乎没有财务转移，并且发现利润转移的最大部分是通过转移定价完成的。