The Europeanization of Good Tax Governance

Summary:

This paper examines how the concept of good tax governance has been received and developed internationally and especially in the context of the EU.

From an international perspective, it is shown that there are many facets of good tax governance and it is not always clear what the term actually covers. For international organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations (UN), the focus is on developing countries and certain state functions such as domestic resource mobilization and capacity building. In a wider context, the focus also seems to be on the relationship between governments and their ability to (automatically) exchange some types of information and ensure transparency. To a lesser extent, the focus is also on the relationship between governments and taxpayers through regimes of enhanced cooperation between tax authorities and some taxpayers. In Part II of this paper, the author considers the soft law initiatives that have been taken in these areas and examines how some of these initiatives are gradually morphing into hard law.

In Parts III–IV, the author examines the development of the concept of good tax governance in the EU context. Here, it is shown that although the EU was more precise as regards the definition of this concept, by linking the concept of good tax governance with fair tax competition. This has enabled the Commission to inject a great amount of subjectivity in this area. The author assesses the implications of what she calls the Europeanization of good tax governance and the problems that this creates in so far as the global development of the concept is concerned.