Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

“Stop This Greed”: The Tax-Avoidance Political Campaign in the OECD and Australia

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Abstract

Corporate tax avoidance has come to be a major political and popular issue. This paper considers the evolution of the corporate tax debate; it scrutinizes the empirical claims and the calls for crackdowns on corporate tax avoidance. It focuses on two jurisdictions, the OECD and Australia, to show how international claims were reproduced in domestic political rhetoric. The paper then considers the economic function of tax competition, and examines the evidence underlying the OECD’s claim that the corporate tax base is being “eroded” by “profit shifting” to lower tax jurisdictions.