Introduction
Amazon, Caterpillar, Google, and Starbucks are just a few examples of multinational firms that
recently managed to make headlines with creative tax avoidance strategies.1 Abundant anecdotal
evidence is in accord with rigorous research results confirming the existence of various forms of
international tax planning by multinational firms.
While the above examples are all US‐based firms, increasing availability of administrative data for
research purposes has enabled researchers to study not only behavioural responses of US‐based
firms to taxation, but also of European and other multinationals. For example, researchers have
analysed European financial data such as Amadeus (from Bureau van Dijk), tax return data, and the
German MiDi dataset. The MiDi is a confidential database available at the research centre of the
Deutsche Bundesbank and it includes all German enterprises investing abroad and satisfying the
reporting requirements (cf. Lipponer, 2011).