Offshore Expertise for Onshore Companies: Director Connections to Island Tax Havens and Corporate Tax Policy

ABSTRACT The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 overhauled the U.S. corporate tax system, lowering the statutory rate, exempting foreign earned income, and strengthening anti-abuse provisions. However, opportunities and incentives for abuse remain. Therefore, while developing tax policy is helpful, this paper posits that developing tax professionalism—not only tax policy—is needed. Efforts to reform tax policy should be balanced with efforts to develop and guard tax professionalism. Implementing tax policies in a flourishing tax system requires flourishing tax professionals. We develop theoretical and moral analyses to assess tax policy and tax professionalism approaches to tax reform. By targeting processes in the tax system, the tax policy approach attempts to influence practitioner behavior by restricting opportunities and incentives for corporate tax aggression. The tax professionalism approach recognizes that beneath efforts to influence behavior is a deeper, fundamental challenge to develop and protect tax professionals as reflexive agents capable of responsibly handling tax system opportunities and incentives. The tax professionalism approach focuses on persons in the tax system—not processes. This paper draws attention to the limitations of the tax policy approach and to the complementary need for the tax professionalism approach and proposes practical approaches to developing tax professionalism.

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Changing Corporate Tax Policy Impacts on the Risk Level of Viet Nam Natural Gas and Oil Firms

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.2294586 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Dinh Tran Ngoc Huy

Keyword(s):

Natural Gas ◽

Tax Policy ◽

Risk Level ◽

Viet Nam ◽

Corporate Tax ◽

Policy Impacts

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Brewing Up Controversy: A Case Exploring the Ethics of Corporate Tax Planning

Issues in Accounting Education ◽

10.2308/iace-51178 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 30 (4) ◽

pp. 311-327 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Megan F. Hess ◽

Raquel Meyer Alexander

Keyword(s):

Real World ◽

Ethical Issues ◽

Tax Avoidance ◽

Tax Planning ◽

Learning Assessment ◽

Class Discussion ◽

Corporate Tax ◽

Tax Havens ◽

Multinational Organizations ◽

The U.S

ABSTRACT This instructional case explores the ethical issues surrounding the corporate tax-planning and tax-avoidance strategies of multinational organizations. Drawing on the real-world experiences of SABMiller, one of the world's largest beverage companies, this case provides a launching point for students to consider the ethics of corporate tax planning. The ethics of multinational tax practices, especially the use of tax havens, has recently become the focus of media and legislative debate in both the U.S. and the U.K., and many well-respected companies, such as General Electric, Apple Inc., and Starbucks are now feeling the pressure to reform. In a post-case learning assessment, students demonstrated significant improvement in their understanding and indicated that they enjoyed discussing this controversial issue. The “Implementation Guidance” section and Teaching Notes offer guidance for in-class discussion of the ethical and tax issues in this case.

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