Unfollow the money: mapping the micro agents of international tax

Abstract

Financial globalization has enabled multinational corporations to shift profits between jurisdictions to lower their tax rate, undermining public finances and concerning policy makers. While policy efforts have focused on the jurisdictions that enable lower taxes, scholars increasingly recognize the importance of micro-level actors. We geographically map corporate tax advisors, influential micro-level actors in tax avoidance, using a novel empirical approach based on LinkedIn. We show that tax advisors are generally located in large cities in the EU and OECD, rather than in places targeted as ‘tax havens’. Using multiple regression analysis, we find that the location of tax advisors is not correlated with the location of corporate profits, financial secrecy, or economic activity. Rather, it correlates with managerial and financial activity. We find that tax advisors are disproportionately placed in the countries writing the blacklists rather than the countries blacklisted. We argue that effective regulation of tax avoidance needs to focus on tax advisors, not only on the destination of financial flows.