We discuss the history, political determinants and current challenges of global tax governance. We divide the last century into three eras: foundation, during which states built a regime to prevent double taxation using bilateral treaties and soft multilateral coordination; stability, during which this regime failed to adapt to the growth in volume and complexity of cross-border trade and investment capital; finally, the current era of crisis, characterized by politicization, an appetite to reform longstanding institutions, and a willingness to trample over fiscal sovereignty. Existing scholarship explaining this trajectory of change can be organized through well-established interest-based, power-based and ideational accounts. We argue that future research could build on this existing scholarship by reorienting in three different ways: from tax competition towards double taxation and tax sovereignty, from the OECD to emerging markets and developing countries, and from mid-level theorization towards the bigger picture of global political economy, of which tax is an intrinsic part.
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Front Matter
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Part I: THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MODERN TAX SYSTEMS
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Part II: COMPARATIVE TAX POLITICS A: THE BASICS
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Part II: COMPARATIVE TAX POLITICS B: CURRENT DEBATES
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Part III: INTERNATIONAL TAX POLITICS A: THE BASICS
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Part III: INTERNATIONAL TAX POLITICS B: CURRENT DEBATES
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Part IV: PREFERENCE FORMATION
