This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. Revenue authorities (RAs) have been adopted by some countries...

Multinational investors often reduce tax on dividends by using indirect investment routes. This paper constructs a tax rate matrix to represent a real-world network of tax treaties between 70 countries and develops network algorithms to study the structure of tax-minimizing (direct or indirect) investment routes in the tax treaty network. The treaty shopping arbitrage rate, defined as the diffe...

In this paper company-level panel data are used to explore the role of tax changes on corporate financial policy. A panel model for the years 1993-98 is estimated confirming the explanatory power of the tax variable. The estimation also shows that firms reduced leverage in the last three years (1996-98) as a reaction to important tax changes: the reduction in 1996 was the effect of the temporar...

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) is a foodborne pathogen. We report here the high-quality draft whole-genome sequences of five STEC strains isolated from clinical cases in the United States. This report is for STEC of serotypes O55:H7, O79:H7, O91:H14, O153:H2, and O156:H25.

BACKGROUND In order to control malaria, it is important to understand the genetic structure of the parasites in each endemic area. Plasmodium vivax is widely distributed in the tropical to temperate regions of Asia and South America, but effective strategies for its elimination have yet to be designed. In South Korea, for example, indigenous vivax malaria was eliminated by the late 1970s, but r...

To contribute the biological mean of CO2 fixation, more than 200 microalgal isolates were screened from lakes, ponds, sediments, hog wastewater, paddy fields, hot springs, and seawater in Taiwan. Two unicellular microalgae, Chlorella sp. NTU-H15 and Chlorella sp. NTU-H25, were isolated from hog wastewater. In the laboratory, they were able to grow up even in aeration containing CO2 up to 40% an...

We estimate the impact of effective profit taxation on the financial leverage of corporations on the basis of a pseudo-panel constructed from corporate tax return micro data for the period 1998-2001, a period which saw the introduction of a major corporate tax reform in Germany. The financial leverage is measured by the ratio of long-term debt to total capital. Endogeneity of the effective corp...

This paper analyzes dividend remittances by a large panel of foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational firms. The dividend policies of foreign affiliates, which convey no signals to public capital markets, nevertheless resemble those used by publicly held companies in paying dividends to diffuse common shareholders. Robustness checks verify that dividend policies of foreign affiliates are little...

Three factors significantly influence profit repatriations by U.S. multinational firms: tax considerations, domestic financing and investment needs, and agency problems inside firms. Dividend repatriations are surprisingly persistent and resemble dividend payments to external shareholders. Tax considerations are influential but not decisive. Affiliates whose organizational forms carry differing...