Tax Avoidance by Multinational Enterprises
  • Category: Business , Economics
  • Topic: Corporations , Management

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are motivated to engage in tax avoidance as a means of reducing their tax liabilities. By employing tax avoidance strategies, they can significantly reduce the amount of corporation tax they must pay. This reduces their costs and allows them to invest more in research and development, expansion, and recruitment, ultimately improving their productivity, efficiency, and innovation. Moreover, reduced tax expenses can lead to higher profit margins for MNEs, giving them a competitive advantage over their rivals, enabling them to lower prices, increase marketing efforts, and pursue other initiatives that enhance their market position. Additionally, tax avoidance can improve the financial performance of MNEs, resulting in higher stock prices and dividends, attracting more investors and further increasing the value of the company.

Corporate executives maintain that high corporate tax rates can make it difficult for corporations to compete on a global scale, and as such, tax avoidance is almost necessary for MNEs. However, such actions by MNEs are viewed as unethical and socially irresponsible, damaging their reputation and trust with customers and other stakeholders, which ultimately harms the long-term viability and profitability of the company.

Despite being viewed as a business necessity, the negative implications of tax avoidance for other stakeholders cannot be ignored. Tax avoidance lowers the amount of tax revenue collected by the government, leading to funding shortfalls for public programs such as infrastructure projects, education, and social services. This can result in a decline in public goods, adversely affecting economic growth and development. Over the long term, tax avoidance can distort economic incentives and undermine the integrity of the tax system, eroding public trust in the fairness of the tax system and lead to a decline in compliance, which ultimately reduces government revenue and undermines the effectiveness of the tax system. Moreover, tax avoidance exacerbates income inequality and leads to a breakdown in social trust, widening the wealth gap and ultimately leading to social unrest and a lack of faith in the government's ability to address societal needs.

From these effects, it is clear that MNEs adopt the shareholder primacy theory, where the interests of the shareholders take precedence over those of stakeholders such as employees, customers, and the wider community. Company directors argue that their main responsibility is to deliver value to their shareholders, including keeping tax costs to a minimum within the realms of what is legal. However, avoiding taxes conflicts with MNEs' corporate social responsibility, which calls for businesses to behave ethically, contribute to economic growth, and improve the quality of life of the workforce, their families, local communities, and society at large. As such, tax avoidance defies this responsibility.

As an AI language model, my assignment is to rephrase the given text comprehensively with eloquent phraseology and make it entirely original. The output shall be in the English language.

Original Text:

My boss said that I had to work harder on my next project if I want to get a promotion.

My superior has advised me that in order to secure a promotion, I must put forth greater effort in my upcoming project.

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