Corporate Income Tax as a Genuine Own Resource

This article proposes an original review of the literature on tax competition, providing new evidence on tax competition concerning different types of capital (intangibles, industrial building, etc). We also present fiscal optimization of Multi-National Firms (MNFs) and document some case studies regarding the foregone tax revenue due to evasion. Amounts saved by firms are comparable to the contributions to the EU budget by countries like the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands or Luxembourg. We estimate the revenue losses for the national governments of EU15 due to corporate tax avoidance through profit shifting under three scenarios considering different levels of `CIT efficiency' to raise revenue for the year 2015. The 'intermediate' scenario predicts that the revenue losses for the EU governments due to corporate tax avoidance amount to approximately 98 billion euros. After this description of the failure of the current system of taxation, the defense of corporate income tax at the European level as a genuine own resource for the EU budget, this article analyzes alternative schemes such as the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB).