The international tax system is a pillar of the post-war economic order, but it faces major challenges with the rise of global value chains, digitalization, and tax avoidance. Debates over international tax reform usually occur within a small epistemic community of experts and technocrats. In this article, we step outside this restricted circle to assess the sources of bottom-up legitimacy and support for the rules that govern where multinationals must report profits and which governments are entitled to tax those profits. We conduct survey experiments in Brazil, France, and the United States to assess mass attitudes toward the allocation of the tax base across countries. We find that people’s views clash with the core principles of the current regime, but are aligned with reform proposals that allocate more taxing rights to market jurisdictions. These findings are strikingly consistent across three countries and three distinct studies. At first glance, the consistency of attitudes across countries could spell good things for international cooperation in this arena. However, we also find a significant level of “home bias” in the public’s views on tax allocation. These results shed new light on the legitimacy of tax reform and on the prospects for cooperation in a key area of international economic relations.

中文翻译：

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跨国公司应该在哪里纳税？

国际税收体系是战后经济秩序的支柱，但随着全球价值链、数字化和避税的兴起，它面临着重大挑战。关于国际税收改革的辩论通常发生在一个由专家和技术官僚组成的小型认知社区内。在本文中，我们跳出这个限制圈，评估自下而上的合法性来源，以及对管理跨国公司必须在哪里报告利润以及哪些政府有权对这些利润征税的规则的支持。我们在巴西、法国和美国进行了调查实验，以评估大众对各国税基分配的态度。我们发现，人们的观点与现行制度的核心原则相冲突，但与将更多征税权分配给市场管辖区的改革建议是一致的。这些发现在三个国家和三项不同的研究中惊人地一致。乍一看，各国态度的一致性可能预示着该领域国际合作的好事。然而，我们也发现公众对税收分配的看法存在很大程度的“本土偏见”。这些结果为税收改革的合法性和国际经济关系关键领域的合作前景提供了新的思路。