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Since the tax policy of a country has become an important determinant in locating foreign capital and labor, countries around the world have started to compete with each other on the basis of the taxes they levy. This development has been a worry for tax collectors. Both the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) and the European Union have been quick to take steps to contain 'harmful' tax practices of member and non-member countries, which according to them could lead to the erosion of tax revenues for governments around the world in a destructive 'race to the bottom'. A strong case is being made for 'tax harmonisation' - standardisation of tax rates among nations. The case helps to discuss the developments and implications of this tug-of-war.
We review the current state of the West African Economic and Monetary Union’s tax coordination framework, against the main objectives of the WAEMU Treaty of 1994: reduce distortions to intra-community trade, and mobilize domestic tax revenue. The process of tax coordination in WAEMU is one of the most advanced in the world—de jure at least—, but remains in many areas ineffective de facto. Nevertheless, the framework has, to some extent, succeeded in converging tax systems, particularly statutory tax rates, and may have contributed to improving revenue mobilisation. Important lessons can be drawn from the WAEMU experience, particularly in terms of whether coordination should take the form of harmonization through a top-down approach, or a softer approach of sharing best practice and limiting certain types of tax competition.
Many Commonwealth developing countries are potentially affected by the EU and OECD initiatives to regulate international tax competition. These articles by experts from Commonwealth countries discuss the concerns of affected nations, covering globalisation, fiscal sovereignty, WTO issues and more.
This paper develops a model of tax competition with three countries that initially form a union where countries refrain from using different tax rates in different sectors of the economy. The authors study the impact of one country leaving the union. The authors show that the introduction of discriminatory taxation in one country increases tax policy heterogeneity within the remaining union. Moreover, the incentives for the two remaining countries to harmonize their tax rates decline. The authors discuss these results in the context of the debate on the tax policy implications of Brexit.
Unofficial translation of the Neumark Report prepared by Dr. H. Thurston. Report of the Fiscal and Financial Committee on tax harmonization in the Common Market.
In our paper, we demonstrate that when countries compete in taxes and infrastructure, coordination through a uniform tax rate or a minimum rate does not necessarily create the welfare effects observed under pure tax competition. The divergence is even worse when the competing jurisdictions differ in institutional quality. If tax revenues are used to gauge the desirability of coordination, our model demonstrates that imposing a uniform tax rate is Pareto-inferior to the non-cooperative equilibrium when countries compete in taxes and infrastructure. This result is completely reversed under pure tax competition if the countries are sufficiently similar in size. If a minimum tax rate is set within the range of those resulting from the non-cooperative equilibrium, the low tax country will never be better off. Finally, the paper demonstrates that the potential social welfare gains from tax harmonization crucially depend on the degree of heterogeneity among the competing countries.