Maya Forstater

Don't let imagination get too carried away! Zucman & OECD's estimate of revenue at stake from multinational profit shifting is c. 0.3% of GDP. Non taxation on HNWIs & high paid professionals in LICs is mainly domestic evasion not international

But how much of that result is due to liberal tax regimes on fdi? True that profit shifting might not be entirely due to tax evasion (@RadleyBen has found that in DRC mining) but the macro impacts might still be major, effecting revenues through overall effect on agg demand.

These are global measures. They really need to be broken down regionally or even by country, because these data most represent larger and wealthier economies, which yes, are mostly domestic. But the effects of MNC profit shifting are much greater for poorer economies.

Also, this is assuming that profit shifting only concerns foreign firms, whereas much of it is by domestic firms. Indeed, even much of profit shifting by MNCs occurs through subsidiaries and affiliates that are effectively domestically resident (e.g. Anglo-American Tanzania etc).

Mexico and India are examples of large economies, continental in the case of India. I have detected anomalies in the BoP of Zambia that are probably attributed to transfer pricing in the range of 10-15% of GDP, in addition to properly registered profit remittances of 5%.