SHOULD TAX POLICY TARGET MULTINATIONAL FIRM HEADQUARTERS?

This paper considers the nature of multinational fi rm headquarters, discussing whether multinational headquarters are a desirable target of tax policy. Prior lit-erature suggests that multinational fi rms are sensitive to tax policy considerations in headquarters location decisions. Fortune 500 lists of the world’s largest fi rms show informative patterns of headquarters location, but there is little systematic relationship between these fi rms ’ headquarters locations and tax policy variables. Similarly, there is an ambiguous relationship between indicators of country-wide scientifi c achievement and tax variables. Implications for tax policy are discussed, with an emphasis on the interaction between increasing economic integration and tax policy design