---
title: "The global minimum tax as a natural experiment"
description: "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?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/global-minimum-tax-and-profit-shifting
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/global-minimum-tax-and-profit-shifting.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Research idea: The global minimum tax as a natural experiment"
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["accounting", "economics", "public finance"]
keywords: ["global minimum tax", "profit shifting", "tax avoidance"]
---

# 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 per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| global minimum tax | 0 | – | 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0 | 6 |
| profit shifting | 0 | – | 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 4, 1, 2, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0 | 37 |
| tax avoidance | 2 | #1303 | 4, 2, 4, 3, 5, 5, 2, 7, 2, 7, 2, 5, 3, 9, 5, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 7, 5, 3, 7, 5, 8, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 4, 3, 5, 2 | 153 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). The global minimum tax as a natural experiment. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/global-minimum-tax-and-profit-shifting

```bibtex
@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}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).