Amanda Parsons (Colorado; Google Scholar) presents The Shifting Financial Allegiance Of Capital Features, 26 Fla. Tax Rev. ___ (2023), at Columbia at this time as a part of its Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Coverage Colloquium hosted by Wojciech Kopczuk, Michael Love,  Alex Raskolnikov, and David Schizer:

Technological advances and the digitalization of the worldwide financial system have created an financial setting past the creativeness of the unique designers of the worldwide tax system. A lot scholarly consideration has been paid to the query of how these financial transformations ought to have an effect on which nation is ready to tax a multinational firm’s earnings. However which nation ought to have the ability to tax capital beneficial properties earnings from the sale of that firm’s shares is a crucial and ignored query.

This Article solutions this query. It concludes that taxing authority over capital beneficial properties earnings have to be reallocated to the nations by which corporations conduct enterprise. In our fashionable, digitalized financial system, this reallocation is critical to align worldwide sourcing guidelines with worldwide tax legislation’s underlying ideas.

The present worldwide sourcing guidelines had been developed within the Nineteen Twenties. These guidelines had been knowledgeable by the advantages precept, which justifies taxation primarily based on the sources {that a} nation gives to taxpayers, and the accompanying method of granting taxing authority to the nation with the closest financial allegiance to an merchandise of earnings. Making use of this method, the unique designers of the worldwide tax system granted taxing authority over capital beneficial properties earnings to the investor’s residence nation slightly than the nations by which an organization operates (the supply nations).

This Article argues that in our fashionable financial setting the financial allegiance of capital beneficial properties earnings has shifted away from the residence nation and in direction of the supply nations. The distinctive nature of worth creation within the digital financial system and multinational corporations’ broad shareholder bases have particularly pushed this shift. Due to this shift, supply nations have to be granted taxing authority over capital beneficial properties earnings if we’re to take care of a coherent and equitable worldwide tax system that’s aligned with its driving norms.

Whereas this Article is a primarily a proof of idea, it additionally seeks to start a dialog about methods to implement this reallocation. It discusses two doable approaches. First, a centralized world pooling and redistribution of capital beneficial properties tax revenues. Second, an annual mark-to market tax on the company-level on will increase in firm worth apportioned amongst supply nations primarily based on a set method.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2023/01/parsons-presents-the-shifting-economic-allegiance-of-capital-gains-today-at-columbia.html