Executive summary
Over the last 10 years, governments have launched major initiatives to reduce international tax evasion. These efforts include the creation of a new form of international cooperation long deemed utopian – an automatic, multilateral exchange of bank information in force since 2017 and applied by more than 100 countries in 2023 – and a landmark international agreement on a global minimum tax for multinational corporations, endorsed by more than 140 countries and territories in 2021.
Yet despite the importance of these developments, little is known about the effects of these new policies. Is global tax evasion falling or rising? Are new issues emerging, and if so, what are they? These questions are of tremendous importance in a context of rising income and wealth inequality, high public debt in the post-Covid-19 context, and large government revenue needs for addressing climate change and for funding health care, education, and public infrastructure.
This report addresses these issues thanks to an unprecedented international research collaboration and major data improvements. Prepared by the staff of the EU Tax Observatory – a research laboratory created in 2021 with unique expertise on international tax issues – this report summarizes work conducted by more than 100 researchers all over the world, otien in partnership with tax administrations. This work leverages the availability of new data on the activities of multinational companies (such as country-by-country reports) and the offshore wealth of households (from the automatic exchange of bank information) created by the policy initiatives of the last decade. This report is the first systematic atempt at taking stock of this informational big bang.
Authors: Annette Alstadsæter, Sarah Godar, Panayiotis Nicolaides, and Gabriel Zucman
Read the full publication here.
About the Eu Tax Observatory
The EU Tax Observatory is an independent research laboratory hosted at the Paris School of Economics. It conducts innovative research on taxation, contributes to a democratic and inclusive debate on the future of taxation, and fosters a dialogue between the scientific community, civil society, and policymakers in the European Union and worldwide.