There is no place like home, or is there? : A difference-in-differences analysis of the effect of the 2013 Swedish corporate tax policy change on Swedish multinational companies’ tax avoidance

Abstract: Recent empirical literature has provided greater insight into the strategies and the extent of multinational companies’ tax avoidance. Simultaneously, in the last decades, the corporate tax rate has gradually decreased in most developed countries, often in the interest of attracting foreign investment. In 2013, Sweden decreased its corporate tax from 26.3% to 22%. This paper is an empirical study of the effect of the corporate tax change on Swedish multinational companies’ tax avoidance. By using a difference-in-differences model, and a sample of firm-level financial data from 19 821 domestic and multinational Swedish companies covering the period 2011 – 2015, a regression analysis is performed to estimate the effect of the policy change. Irrespective of empirical specification, I find no statistically significant effect of the tax change on tax avoidance.