CBT Symposium 2023

10 July 2023

Business Tax Symposium 

Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation
and 
Skatteforsk, Centre for Tax Research, Norwegian University of Life Sciences

26 – 28 June 2023

The Business Tax Symposium is an annual interdisciplinary event of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation which has been held each year since 2007. It is currently scheduled over 2.5 days and took place in 2023 from June 26-28. In 2023, the symposium was co-sponsored by Skatteforsk. The Skatteforsk director, Annette Alstadsæter, presented a paper and chaired a session during the symposium. 

18 papers were presented at the symposium by international scholars from economics, law and accounting. Nine presenting authors are based in Europe and nine in North America. Other participants, including discussants, also attended from Israel, Australia and New Zealand.  

A list of papers, presenters and discussants is set out below. The full programme is also available. 

Papers ranged over a number of current research and policy issues. Several papers addressed topics in international taxation, including: evaluations of the US 2017 tax reform and the BEPS multilateral tax treaty; the impact of tax planning on real activity and wages; the effects of carbon taxes; and theoretical work on international taxation from both economic and legal perspectives. One paper compared effective tax rates across a number of countries. Other papers addressed tax deductions – including for employee compensation and incentives for venture capital investment and charitable contributions. Other topics discussed included tax risk, a proposal for a progressive VAT, the relationship between tax and ESG and the external validity of empirical work in public finance. 

Papers presented (presenter in bold)

Annette Alstadsæter, Pennies from Haven: Wages and Profit Shifting, with Julie Brun Bjørkheim, Ronald B. Davies and Johannes Scheuerer 

Eduardo Baistrocchi, A Theory of International Taxation 

Johannes Becker, Generalized formula apportionment of MNE profits 

Michael Blackwell, Tax Risk 

Jennifer Blouin, The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and Investment Efficiency: The Role of Accounting, with Linda Krull and Leslie Robinson

Anne Brockmeyer, Effective Tax Rates and Firm Size, with Pierre Bachas, Roel Dom and Camille Semelet 

Wei Cui, The Mirage of Mobile Capital

Rita de la Feria, Designing a Progressive VAT, with Artur Swistak

Pablo Garriga, Firms as Tax Collectors, with Dario Tortarolo

İrem Güçeri, Investor Tax Breaks and Venture Capital Investment: Evidence from China, with Xipei Hou and Jing Xing 

James Hines, Quality-aware tax incentives for charitable contributions, with Zachary Halberstam 

Marcel Olbert, The Effects of Taxing Carbon Emissions on Carbon Leakage to Developing Countries
with Diego Kaenzig and Julian Marenz

Alex Raskolnikov, Poor ESG 

Nadine Riedel, Multilateral Tax Treaty Revision to Combat Tax Avoidance: On the Merits and Limits of BEPS’s Multilateral Instrument, with Antonia Hohmann and Valeria Merlo 

Daniel Schaffa, Reimagining the Deduction for Employee Compensation 

Joel Slemrod, External Validity in Empirical Public Finance, with Rex Hsieh and Gerardo Sanz-Maldonado 

Juan Carlos Suarez-Serrato, Does Tax Planning by US Multinationals Impact their Economic Activity? with Rosanne Altshuler and Lysle Boller

Eric Zwick, Tax Policy and Global Investment Behavior, with Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Matt Smith, and Owen Zidar 

Discussants: 

Alan Auerbach, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Kristoffer Berg, Stephen Bond, Sarah Clifford, Michael Devereux, Phillip Dörrenberg, Naomi Feldman, Clemens Fuest, Peter Koerver Schmidt, Rick Krever, Ben Lockwood, Simon Loretz, Leopoldo Parada, Wolfgang Schön, Jawad Shah, Martin Simmler and Johannes Voget.