Oxford’s University Centre for Business Taxation and Skatteforsk - Centre for Tax Research, welcomed academics from around the world for the seventeenth annual symposium of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation. Research on a broad array of topics related to business taxation were presented. This included papers from economics, law and other disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary contributions.
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 director of Skatteforsk, Annette Alstadsæter, presented a paper titled “Pennies from Haven: Wages and Profit Shifting” together with Skatteforsk researchers Julie Brun Bjørkheim, Ronald B. Davies and Johannes Scheuerer. Alstadsæter also chaired a session during the symposium.
Nadine Riedel, also member of Skatteforsk, presented her paper “Multilateral Tax Treaty Revision to Combat Tax Avoidance: On the Merits and Limits of BEPS’s Multilateral Instrument”, together with Antonia Hohmann and Valeria Merlo.
18 papers were presented in total 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 and discussants from Israel, Australia and New Zealand, were also present at the event.
The full programme, together with a detailed list of the papers presented and the participants and discussants, is available online at Oxford’s event page.
The papers presented cover a vast 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.
Other papers addressed tax deductions – including for employee compensation and incentives for venture capital investment and charitable contributions. Also discussed at the event were some papers that shone light on tax risk, a proposal for a progressive VAT, the relationship between tax and ESG and the external validity of empirical work in public finance.