Planification fiscale agressive : l’oublié de l’ESG ?
Danielle A. Chaim et Gideon Parchomovsky propose un article (sur SSRN) abordant les limites de la prise en compte des facteurs ESG : la non tenue compte de l’évitement fiscal des entreprises !
- « The Missing « T » in ESG », Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol. 77, No. 3, 2024, Bar Ilan University Faculty of Law Research Paper No. 4802304, 21 avril 2024
Quelques extraits :
In a recent paper, we argue that amidst the enthusiasm about ESG, a critical parameter has gone virtually unnoticed: corporate tax behavior. The payment of corporate taxes is a powerful indicator of how a company views its role in society and supports the communities in which it operates and the stakeholders with whom it engages.
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To demonstrate this gap, we have examined the criteria used by ESG rating agencies, their methodologies and scoring systems. We then supplemented our findings by direct communications with several agencies. Our investigation reveals a persistent tendency to overlook tax behavior when evaluating companies’ ESG profiles. Specifically, a company’s involvement in tax avoidance—the pursuit of transactions and structures to reduce tax liability in a manner that is contrary to the spirit of the law—hardly impacts its ESG score despite the potential consequences for stakeholders and society.
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The emerging pattern suggests that rather than advocating for greater tax compliance that aligns more closely with ESG values, institutional investors, including those at the helm of the nation’s largest mutual ESG funds, may be fueling tax avoidance behavior. Given the broad economic and social implications of corporate tax avoidance, this inclination reflects the illusory promise of asset managers as ESG regulators.
As to public corporations, our analysis of the tax performance of many U.S. corporations lauded for being the promoters of ESG goals reveals that they grossly underpay taxes, leading to unprecedented levels of corporate tax avoidance.
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To fix the problem and break the vicious cycle, we propose implementing changes on three fronts. First, ESG rating agencies must incorporate tax considerations into their ratings with considerable weight. Second, asset managers should explicitly commit to responsible tax behavior in their corporate guidelines and, under certain circumstances, divest from companies whose tax behavior falls below industry peers. Lastly, we advocate for mandatory public disclosure of tax-related information, including adopting a CbCR requirement for all U.S. public companies.
À la prochaine…