Tax income differences between multinational and domestic corporations in Norway : a panel data approach

Abstract

In this paper regression analysis is used to investigate negative profitability differential between foreign and domestic companies in Norway. More years and industries are included in the sample compared to previous studies on Norwegian data. Panel data methods, allowing to get rid of get rid of unobserved heterogeneity across the firms, are applied, in addition to OLS used in most of the earlier literature. More accurate and detailed classification of firms into different foreignness categories is conducted that allows to "refine" control group used for comparisons. The results indicate that multinational firms report around 30% lower profitability than comparable domestic firms. It has also been shown that profitability of domestic firms goes down by about 20% when they become multinational. This is after the most important characteristics and permanent differences between these two types of firms have been controlled for. The estimates of the profitability differential has been shown to be robust to different estimations methods used, as well as different definitions of foreignness and profitability measures. The differential found is consistent with profit shifting behavior by multinational companies in Norway, and would imply that profits are shifted out of Norway. The evidence provided cannot serve a direct proof of profit-shifting activities by multinational firms in Norway, but it strongly suggests that further research is warranted in order to get a better understanding of the problem of profit-shifting.