Tax Haven and Development Partner: Incoherence in Dutch Government Policies

This paper focuses on a relatively new issue in the debate on policy coherence for development: the incoherence between tax and aid policies, using a case study of the Netherlands as illustration. Although the Netherlands cannot be considered a ‘pure’ tax haven like the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, evidence indicates that it does play a key role as ‘conduit’ country in tax planning structures of multinationals that wish to channel funds to ‘pure’ tax havens. This paper shows that as a consequence of the Dutch fiscal regime, other countries, including developing countries, are failing to collect important tax revenues which otherwise could have been used to finance health care, education and other essential public goods and services. It is estimated that developing countries miss about € 640 million in tax revenue – about 15 % of Dutch ODA. This suggests the Dutch tax policy is incoherent with the Dutch policy on development cooperation.development policy; tax policy; policy coherence; policy incoherence

Still Broken: Governments Must Do More to Fix the International Corporate Tax System

The gap between where companies pay tax and where they really do their business is huge, as shown by new research described in this briefing. In 2012, US multinationals alone shifted $500-700bn, mostly to countries where these profits are not taxed, or taxed at very low rates. G20 countries themselves are among the biggest losers. The measures recently announced by the OECD leave the fundamentals of a broken tax system intact and do not stop the race to the bottom in corporate taxation. G20 governments must do more and should strongly support further reforms

'Pouring politics down our throats': political CSR communication and consumer catharsis

This chapter theorizes the outrageous consumer response that may follow the communication of political corporate social responsibility (CSR). We consider two recent cases (Starbucks’s offer to hire refugees and Pepsi’s appropriation of protest movements in an ad) and how consumers-citizens reacted when these corporations communicated political issues. By drawing from psychoanalytic concepts, we illustrate how consumers’ outrage, expressed in angry social media comments, and in the creation and sharing of memes, is cathartic of unconscious repressed matter: the realization of their own powerless and the domination of corporations. We further note how these expressions of outrage may be understood to result from defense mechanisms such as denial, displacement, or more complex sublimation that help consumers maintain a position of passive domination by corporations. Like all psychoanalytic applications, our interpretation represents only a plausible metaphor that can explain the “irrational” behavior of consumers. Positivist traditions of CSR theorization may demand further causal studies to confirm the ideas we express. Our study is an original exploration of what underlies consumer responses to political CSR. These cases could inform academics and practitioners working in the business and society arena asking them to re-evaluate whether and how political CSR should be communicated, and the implications of the rapid diffusion of messages in social media that include mocking parody and offensive brand comments

Tax Haven and Development Partner: Incoherence in Dutch Government Policies

This paper focuses on a relatively new issue in the debate on policy coherence for development: the incoherence between tax and aid policies, using a case study of the Netherlands as illustration. Although the Netherlands cannot be considered a ‘pure’ tax haven like the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, evidence indicates that it does play a key role as ‘conduit’ country in tax planning structures of multinationals that wish to channel funds to ‘pure’ tax havens. This paper shows that as a consequence of the Dutch fiscal regime, other countries, including developing countries, are failing to collect important tax revenues which otherwise could have been used to finance health care, education and other essential public goods and services. It is estimated that developing countries miss about € 640 million in tax revenue – about 15 % of Dutch ODA. This suggests the Dutch tax policy is incoherent with the Dutch policy on development cooperation