Base Erosion and Profit Shifting in Continental Africa and Beyond

Base erosion and profit shifting has become the latest burden on countries’ tax revenue collection agencies the world over.  Recent studies have found how it occurs in the both the developed and developing world, but these same studies haven’t answered the question of why in the developing world.  This thesis tries to answer that question concerning Africa, which is a continent full of developing nations.  Using Base Erosion, Profit Shifting, and Developing Countries (Crivelli et. al, 2015) which outlines how the international economy is interconnected through a tax base spillover estimation, this paper turns its attention towards the developing nations of Africa.  The analysis of the data collected showed trends towards increased base spillover in not simply African nations, but those which are simply more fragile in nature.  This implies that resources should be used to bring fragile nations into the fold of sustainable countries where lost tax base revenues are minimized.  Applying fixed effects regressions on a country-level panel dataset spanning 30 years (1990-2020) to explore the relationship between corruption and base spillover - the country level measurement of corporate tax avoidance, we find that corruption has a significant and negative impact on a country's tax base, and thus its revenue, in both the developing and developed world.