Tax Avoidance and Transfer Pricing

Abstract

Globalization has led multinational companies, beyond intensifying their competitiveness, to seek ways to maximize profits through tax avoidance. The international character enables them to transfer profits to tax havens or seek transactions that will enable them to avoid, postpone, or pay lower taxes. Although the previous allegations have been hypothesized by researchers, tax audits, and governments, it is difficult to prove due to the chaotic data and the causal relationship between variables. The present study compared the tax burden of 971 multinationals and 1,160 independent companies for the years 2010-2017 in Greece, using data from the Amadeus Tp-Catalyst database and confirmed previous research on significant differences in terms of profits and tax burdens. To the authors' knowledge, there has not been attempted such an extensive analysis for Greece in the past.