The increased global mobility of capital and labour poses a number of challenges to national tax systems: intricate global structures to hide personal wealth from the eyes of tax administrators and regulators, conflicts about the international allocation of taxing rights, and a fast-evolving international tax policy landscape. The seminar focuses on the topic of taxation in the global economy and aims to bring together international junior and senior researchers working on international taxation, tax avoidance and evasion, tax competition, tax harmonisation and related topics. Presentations can be polished papers or work in progress. The aim is to learn from each other and to discuss in a friendly atmosphere.

The seminar takes place at Paris School of Economics and via Zoom.

Sign up for the seminar mailing list here.

If you would like to book a private time slot to meet the speaker, please email Léo Czajka leo.czajka@psemail.eu specifying which session.

2026-27 Calendar

Friday 25 September 2026 12:00-13:00 │ R1-15

• Christos Kotsogiannis (University of Exeter and CESifo): VAT Threshold and Organisational Splitting with Kenneth Tester

Abstract: This paper studies the optimal VAT registration threshold when firms can artificially split their activities across multiple legal entities. Rather than suppressing output to remain below the threshold, firms may preserve their productive scale by splitting activity across sub-threshold entities, albeit at an organisational cost. Introducing this additional behavioural margin changes the government’s threshold design problem: a higher threshold can reduce both output distortions and inefficient organisational fragmentation, but at the cost of narrowing the formal tax base. A key feature of the analysis is that the optimal policy depends critically on enforcement capacity. In the numerical examples, weak enforcement raises the optimal threshold relative to the no-splitting benchmark. Intermediate enforcement can lower it, while stronger enforcement eliminates splitting at the optimum and restores the benchmark allocation. The analysis highlights the importance of accounting for organisational responses when designing VAT registration thresholds.

Friday 9 October 2026 12:00-13:00 │ R1-15

• Valentin Marchal (University of Konstanz)

Friday 16 October 2026 12:00-13:00 │ R1-15

• Elena Herold (ifo Institute)

Friday 13 November 2026 12:00-13:00 │ R1-15

• Javier Soria-Espin (PSE )

Friday 27 November 2026 12:00-13:00 │ R1-15

• Franziska Disslbacher (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business)

Friday 11 December 2026 12:00-13:00 │ R1-15

• Antonella Bancalari (IFS – Institute for Fiscal Studies)

Past Seminars

Friday 11 September 2026 12:00-13:00 │ R1-15

• Louis de la Chapelle (CREST): Investment Tax Incentives and the Price of Capital Goods: Consequences for Policy Effectiveness and Incidence

Abstract: Investment tax incentives are common and ambitious policies, yet we know surprisingly little about their consequences for the prices of the capital goods they subsidize. We study these consequences in the case of a temporary investment tax incentive in France, which mechanically reduced the user cost of capital by 13% between 2015 and 2017. Using firm and product-level data on production and prices, we show that the policy raised the pre-tax price of eligible capital goods by 2.6% on average. We draw three implications for the effectiveness and the incidence of investment tax incentives. First, measuring investment responses in value terms may overstate physical capital expansion, by a third in our context. Second, the price effects that mediate the policy are context-dependent, which questions the external validity of any given estimate: we find them concentrated in less competitive and in capacity-constrained product categories, and absent elsewhere. Third, capital producers captured at least 30% of the benefits of this investment tax incentive.

Friday 4 September 2026 12:00-13:00 │ R1-15

• Juan Rios Rivera (PUC-Rio)

This project is funded by the European Union. 

The Offshore Talks #6
Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won

Special Guest: Oliver Bullough – An award-winning investigative journalist specialising in the area of corruption

🗓️ 14 October 2026 │12:30–14:00 (CET)

🌐 Language: English

📍 Room R2-21, Paris School of Economics, 48 Bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris

Join us for the sixth lecture in our Offshore Talks series with Oliver Bullough, who will present his book “Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won“.

The book explores the hidden financial infrastructure that enables crime to operate across borders: money laundering. From drug cartels and corrupt politicians to tax evaders, kleptocrats, and traffickers, the ability to move, conceal, and legitimise illicit wealth is central to the global criminal economy.

Drawing on examples from around the world, it examines how cash, informal networks, luxury goods, and cryptocurrencies allow dirty money to circulate beyond the reach of authorities. The book challenges conventional approaches to combating money laundering, arguing that the persistence of illicit finance reflects not only a failure of enforcement, but also a failure to understand how the global economy enables crime.

Oliver will be joined by Sara Brimbeuf, Advocacy Manager for Grand Corruption and Illicit Financial Flows at Transparency International France. She focuses particularly on the recovery of “ill-gotten gains,” the fight against money laundering, and tax transparency.

Join us for an engaging discussion, followed by a Q&A session, where you’ll have the opportunity to delve deeper into the implications of the research.

📝 Agenda:

• 12:00–12:30 Lunch
• 12:30–13:15 Book presentation
• 13:15–13:45 Panel discussion with Sara Brimbeuf
• 13:45–14:00 Q&A with the audience

This event is FREE and open to all, but seats are limited! Register by October 7th to secure your place.

The seminar will not be livestreamed.

Charles University, with the support of the European Commission (DG TAXUD) and in collaboration with the International Tax Observatory and Skatteforsk – Norwegian Centre for Tax Research, will host Beyond BEPS, a workshop on the real effects of international taxation, on 25–26 November 2026 in Hotel Volarik in Mikulov, Czechia. The workshop will bring together around twenty researchers for two days of focused discussion in a small, informal setting.

We invite submissions of empirical and theoretical work on the effects of international taxation on real outcomes, including but not limited to:

• Employment and wages
• Productivity and prices
• Global value chains
• Environment
• Inequality

Submission

The programme will feature keynote lectures by Nadine Riedel (University of Munster) and Niels Johannesen (Oxford University).

Please submit full papers in PDF format here by Friday 31 July 2026. Authors of accepted papers will be notified in early August 2026.

Practical information

There is no registration fee. Venue, catering, and a conference dinner will be provided. Participants are asked to arrange reimbursement of travel costs through their own institutions. Limited travel funding is available for participants who otherwise would not be able to attend.

Format

Each accepted paper will be allocated approximately one hour, including a presentation and a dedicated discussant. We welcome both completed papers and sufficiently developed drafts. Submissions will be reviewed by a selection committee.

For any questions, please contact Miroslav Palanský at miroslav.palansky@fsv.cuni.cz.

Organising committee: Giulia Aliprandi, Samuel Delpeuch, and Miroslav Palanský

The Offshore Talks – An Exploration of Tax Avoidance, Tax Evasion and Illicit Financial Flows

How do the wealthy manage to dodge taxes and hide their fortunes in secret jurisdictions? What is the impact of hidden financial flows on the world economy? It’s time to lift the veil! Join us for The Offshore Talks, a groundbreaking lecture series that dives deep into the world of tax avoidance, tax evasion, and illicit financial flows.

? What’s in store? Leading voices from economics, law, political science, investigative journalism, and beyond will converge to share their latest research and real-world insights. Get ready for an exciting lineup of distinguished speakers who will help you navigate the hidden mechanisms that shape global inequality.

The seminar takes place at the Paris School of Economics.

Sign-up for the seminar mailing list here.

Upcoming seminars:

14 October 2026 – Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won with Oliver Bullough, an award-winning investigative journalist specialising in the area of corruption

23 November 2026 – The Offshore Talks with Jesse Drucker, an investigative reporter for the New York Times Business section who has written extensively on the world of high-end tax avoidance

Past seminars:

The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It with Katharina Pistor, Professor at Columbia Law School

Why Does Offshore Still Exist in an Age of Transparency? with Jason Sharman, Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor, Cambridge.

Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism with Brooke Harrington, Professor of Economic Sociology, Dartmouth College.

Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy with Quinn Slobodian, Professor of international history at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University.

The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires with Kristin Surak, Associate Professor of Political Sociology at the London School of Economics.