The global minimum tax as a natural experiment

Tax avoidance and profit shifting are steady topics across the finance, accounting and economics journals, but the 15% global minimum tax, in force in many countries since 2024, barely appears; only 3 of 103 recent papers carry a minimum-tax keyword. Does it end profit shifting, or move it to other margins?

What prompted this#

Since October 2025, 103 papers carry a tax-avoidance, profit-shifting or tax-haven keyword (36 in finance journals, 30 in accounting, 27 in economics). Only 3 of them also carry a minimum-tax, Pillar Two or BEPS keyword, and "global minimum tax" appears on 4 papers in all.

Questions#

For multinationals above the €750 million revenue threshold, did effective tax rates in low-tax affiliates rise toward 15% from 2024, compared with groups just below it?
Did profits stop moving to low-tax countries, or move into the tax credits and incentives the rules still allow?
How did low-tax countries respond: domestic top-up taxes, new subsidies, or both?

Data that could help#

Public country-by-country reports, which the EU requires from large groups from 2025 onward, affiliate-level financials (Orbis), and the OECD's corporate tax statistics.

Next step#

Compare effective tax rates of groups just above and just below the €750 million threshold before and after 2024, using affiliate data.

Related research activity#

The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26
Keyword	Papers, last 30 days	Rank	Papers, last 36 months
global minimum tax	0	–	6
profit shifting	0	–	37
tax avoidance	2	#1303	153

@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-global-minimum-tax-and-profit-shifting, author = {{Scholar4AI}}, title = {The global minimum tax as a natural experiment}, year = {2026}, howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/global-minimum-tax-and-profit-shifting}}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0} }