Department of Methodology & Statistics, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Centre for Complex Systems Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2023 Nov 29;18(11):e0293552. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0293552. eCollection 2023.
Effective tax rates (ETRs) estimated from the income statement data of multinational corporations (MNCs) are useful for comparing MNCs' corporate income taxation across countries. In this paper, we propose a new methodological approach to estimate ETRs as reliably and for as many countries as possible using Orbis' unconsolidated data for the 2011-2015 period. We focus on countries with at least 50 available companies, which results in a sample of 47, mostly European, countries. We estimate the ETR of a country as the ratio of corporate income tax to gross income for all affiliates of MNCs in that country, weighted by gross income. We propose four ETR estimations, including lower and upper bounds, which differ by gross income calculation. We find that ETRs substantially differ from statutory tax rates for some countries. For example, we show that despite similar statutory rates of 28% and 29%, MNCs in Luxembourg paid as little as 1-8% of gross income in taxes, while those in Norway paid as much as 46-67%. Despite being the best available, existing data is still imperfect. We therefore call for better data in the form of MNCs' unconsolidated, public country-by-country reporting data.
从跨国公司（MNC）的损益表数据中估算的有效税率（ETR）可用于比较跨国公司在各国的公司所得税。在本文中，我们提出了一种新的方法，使用 Orbis 在 2011-2015 年期间的非合并数据，尽可能可靠地估算尽可能多的国家的 ETR。我们专注于至少有 50 家可用公司的国家，这导致了 47 个国家的样本，主要是欧洲国家。我们将一国的 ETR 估计为该国所有跨国公司子公司的企业所得税与总收入的比率，按总收入加权。我们提出了四种 ETR 估算，包括上下限，这些估算因总收入的计算而有所不同。我们发现，对于一些国家来说，ETR 与法定税率有很大的不同。例如，尽管法定税率相似（28%和 29%），卢森堡的跨国公司的企业所得税仅占总收入的 1-8%，而挪威的跨国公司的企业所得税却高达 46-67%。尽管现有数据是最好的，但仍然存在缺陷。因此，我们呼吁以跨国公司非合并的公开国别报告数据的形式提供更好的数据。
