Today, foreign direct investments (FDI) are very common and are part of globalization. They are sometimes seen as a good thing, but they also can be at the origin of non ethical actions. From the point of view of Governments they are something to attract and they set up different incentives to achieve this goal, and especially tax incentives. In this situation, we want to ask a question which is: how can we say that tax incentives can participate to make worse the lack of ethics in FDI? To answer this question we will first see which are the non ethical actions dragged with FDI. Then we want to study what are the motivations of countries to attract FDI, and in a last part we will see the different tax incentives for FDI and their consequences.
I/ Ethics in foreign direct investment
The development of the foreign direct investments (FDI), can drag with many non ethical actions. We can find three major issues. Many FDI are done in an objective of tax evasion, or at least to obtain better tax advantages (lower tax burden). To attract FDI some country can decrease their ethical standards. And FDI can also drag with corruption.
Tax evasion through FDI…