The Guardian goes ahead with "the poorest countries"pic.twitter.com/jcqMwOGRyY
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How the perceptions of a pot of gold from multinational tax just keep coming back. @Lagarde said non-OECD countries are losing $200bn. If Christine Lagarde says it it must be true, right? https://blogs.imf.org/2019/03/25/corporate-taxation-in-the-global-economy/ …pic.twitter.com/4keLtjd5zn
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@CGDev (!!) puts the number into a blog post on Sub-Saharan Africa https://twitter.com/MForstater/status/1124240755906830336 …pic.twitter.com/hbWxlBtSPx
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But where does the $200 billion figure come from in the first place? Why is Lagarde so confident about it? It is from a 2015 IMF Working Paper (Crivelli, De Mooij and Keen). Here it is with error bars. CDK say its highly speculative & illustrative https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2016/12/31/Base-Erosion-Profit-Shifting-and-Developing-Countries-42973 …pic.twitter.com/FMV9jqbRIG
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But by 2019 the error bars have gone and the IMF say these are "estimates". They say "Quantification remains difficult...but work since IMF (2014) confirms the significance of the issue"pic.twitter.com/KaxkqtycJF
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There is a bit of confusion here - they say 'subsequent studies reach similar conclusions' (i.e. that developing countries are particularly vulnerable to profit shifting), but it looks like subsequent studies are confirming this scale.pic.twitter.com/koeIvOrR4Y
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But they don't. Subsequent studies eg Tørsløv, Wier, and Zucman show much smaller numbers. https://www.cgdev.org/publication/reading-missing-profits-nations … And so do studies using tax return data https://www.cgdev.org/blog/how-big-transfer-pricing-prize-development ….pic.twitter.com/J6VxrWoAil
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The scale of
at stake is smaller than we imagine. But these misunderstandings keep remaking themselves. Why? Is it collective wishful thinking, institutional jostling for the sexy topic of tax reform, an ideological tactic to shift the Overton window. Or is it me thats wrong?Show this thread
End of conversation
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It’s all a bunch of hype by academics needing to justify their existence and ensure their continued funding.
#crooks#tax#internationaltax#dontbelievethehypeThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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