Tax Avoidance, Tax Evasion, and Tax Fairness – the Meaning of 'Fair Share' in International Corporate Income Taxation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Tax Scholars, tax practitioners, and tax administrators often draw a difference between tax avoidance – which is legal, but perhaps immoral – and tax evasion – which is legal and immoral. However, the concepts and definitions (though not settled) of tax avoidance and tax evasion, and their relationship to tax fairness (itself an evolving concept), has been under attack, particularly in the aftermath of the 2008 world financial crisis. This study seeks to identify a framework that can be used to determine whether or not a corporation is paying its “fair share” of tax in a jurisdiction or not – ie. Whether a corporation meets the terms of its social licence to operate. The study merges the theories and principles being developed in the realm of Corporate Social Responsibility (“CSR”) with those laying behind the difference between tax avoidance, tax evasion, “fair share” of tax, to develop a concept of Corporate Tax Responsibility (“CTR”). This is done in relation to the international tax rules most often used – those found in the OECD’s Model Tax Treaty. This paper starts by examining, summarily, the historical development of the concepts and definitions of tax avoidance and tax evasion, identifying the principles that support the distinction. This portion of the paper starts with the case of Duke of Westminster (cited as the legal basis for differentiating between avoidance and evasion) and ends with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (“OECD”) Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (“BEPS”) initiative. Then, again summarily, the paper examines the principles and theories upon with the modern, developing concept of CSR is founded. After setting the background, the paper compares and contrasts the principles developed in the first two parts, in order to develop a concept of CTR and a framework that can be used to determine whether or not a corporation is paying a “fair share” of tax. The paper concludes by examining the international tax rules and identifying problem rules that may prevent or hinder a corporation meeting its CTR obligations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.027 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".