The six papers in this vohune represent state-of-the-art empirical and conceptual research on various aspects of the taxation of multinational corporations. They were commissioned for and presented at a conference organized by Price Waterhouse LLP on behalf of the International Tax Policy Forum, held in Washington, DC in March, 1994. The ftrst four papers were originally published in the May, 1995 issue of International Tax and Public Finance. The Slemrod paper appeared in the Policy Watch Section of the November, 1995 issue of that journal. The foregoing papers were subject to the normal refereeing procedures of the journal, and the summaries that follow are drawn from there. The Leamer paper has not been previously published. Altshuler and Mintz examine one aspect of the 1986 u. s. Tax Reform Act --the change in the rules for the allocation of interest expense between domestic-(U. S. ) and foreign-source income. In the absence of rules, a parent with excess credits could reduce U. S. tax liability by allocating interest expense toward itself; thus reducing its taxable domestic income without any compensating increase in either the U. S. tax due on foreign-source income or the foreign tax due (which is independent of U. S. rules).

The tax rules of the United States and other countries have intended and unintended effects on the operations of multinational corporations, influencing everything from the formation and allocation of capital to competitive strategies. The growing importance of international business has led economists to reconsider whether current systems of taxing international income are viable in a world of significant capital market integration and global commercial competition. In an attempt to quantify the effect of tax policy on international investment choices, this volume presents in-depth analyses of the interaction of international tax rules and the investment decisions of multinational enterprises. Ten papers assess the role played by multinational firms and their investment in the U.S. economy and the design of international tax rules for multinational investment; analyze channels through which international tax rules affect the costs of international business activities; and examine ways in which international tax rules affect financing decisions of multinational firms. As a group, the papers demonstrate that international tax rules have significant effects on firms' investment and other financing decisions.

Given its prominence among the world’s major industrial jurisdictions, Japan is involved in numerous multinational corporate transactions, and its extensive and complex tax regime inevitably plays an important role. This unique book, with its easy-to-use Q&A format, provides succinct and authoritative responses to most of the questions that tax professionals operating in or doing business with Japan are likely to face in practice. The author, a well-known Japanese international tax specialist, has organised eighty-seven questions around tax issues he has consulted on over more than twenty years of direct experience in advising international businesses. The questions, all based on actual examples, cover every area of tax practice, including the following: tax notifications upon establishment of a Japanese company; foreign tax credits; transfer pricing documentation obligations; tax treatment of small- and medium-sized enterprises; exemption from withholding tax for Japanese branches of foreign corporations; withholding tax on royalties for trademarks and relief under tax conventions; withholding tax on directors’ remuneration paid to non-resident directors; maintenance of electronic accounting books and records; tax treatment of bad debt losses; deductibility of entertainment expenses; sales and purchases of goods located in Japan by a foreign corporation; and tax treatment of the cross-border supply of electronic services. The English translations of terms used in Japanese taxation and tax practice are designed to facilitate understanding for non-Japanese tax practitioners. As an overview of Japanese tax issues that may be faced in the realm of international business, this incomparable book provides tax professionals with a wealth of expertise that may be readily applied to any tax strategy involving a business transaction with a Japanese element. It will be welcomed by in-house corporate counsel, taxation academics, and tax lawyers worldwide.

This leading text in the field covers all the major regulatory areas relating to the operations of multinational enterprises, analysing them not only in a legal but also a political and economic context. It is a definitive reference work for students, researchers, and practitioners working with multinational enterprises.

Multinational Corporations and the Emerging Network Economy in Asia and the Pacific delves into the ongoing rise of a global economy anchored in a web of inter-firm production networks and the role played by multinational corporations in the process. It considers the strategies and business models corporations have adopted lately to face today’s highly competitive global markets, especially outsourcing and offshoring, focusing on the modalities observed in Asia Pacific and the Pacific Rim at large. Since their inception, corporations have undergone a series of fundamental changes; each has corresponded to a given era of industrial development and has given rise to a particular type of government policy response. The book addresses these timely issues and other such as the transformation of global production networks into global innovation networks, the link between corporate and national innovation strategies and movement up the global production value chain, and the fragmentation of production and the resulting increase in component and sub-assembly trade in the region. It also takes up the emergence of multinational corporations from developing countries and the efforts aimed at forging basic rules of corporate social responsibility and developing sound institutions for building a working framework of corporate governance in the Pacific. Written by some of the region’s most eminent and influential economists and political scientists, this volume will appeal to students and scholars working in the field of Asia Pacific studies as well as to businesspersons and policymakers taking decisions in the region.

What makes a country attractive to foreign investors? To what extent do conditions of governance and politics matter? This book provides the most systematic exploration to date of these crucial questions at the nexus of politics and economics. Using quantitative data and interviews with investment promotion agencies, investment location consultants, political risk insurers, and decision makers at multinational corporations, Nathan Jensen arrives at a surprising conclusion: Countries may be competing for international capital, but government fiscal policy--both taxation and spending--has little impact on multinationals' investment decisions. Although government policy has a limited ability to determine patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, political institutions are central to explaining why some countries are more successful in attracting international capital. First, democratic institutions lower political risks for multinational corporations. Indeed, they lead to massive amounts of foreign direct investment. Second, politically federal institutions, in contrast to fiscally federal institutions, lower political risks for multinationals and allow host countries to attract higher levels of FDI inflows. Third, the International Monetary Fund, often cited as a catalyst for promoting foreign investment, actually deters multinationals from investment in countries under IMF programs. Even after controlling for the factors that lead countries to seek IMF support, IMF agreements are associated with much lower levels of FDI inflows.