International Tax Competition: The Last Battleground of Globalization

Abstract:     
Increasingly linked by regional and global ties, national economies depend more than ever on international investments and trade. While trade and investment have become international, however, taxation has remained national, preserving and strengthening one of the few remaining barriers to cross-border economic flows. Given their general unwillingness to be bound by multilateral tax agreements, governments increasingly study the tax policies in place elsewhere to ensure that their tax rules governing the treatment of cross-border investments are ‘competitive’ with those of foreign tax regimes. To highlight the relevant policy issues, the article discusses the challenges of taxing one cross-border investment, namely the Hollywood blockbuster movie 300, which was loosely based on Herodotus’ account of the Battle of Thermopylae in The Histories. A final section touches on the ways that international tax policy analysis struggles to identify optimal laws and policies given the reality of a non-cooperative government setting.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 5

Keywords: tax, international tax, globalization, investment, trade, sovereignty, Herodotus

JEL Classification: B20, E62, F20, H25, K34, K33

Accepted Paper Series