Article: Tax Competition and the EU Anti-money Laundering Regime

Abstract

Member States engage in tax competition to expand their tax bases thereby risking a ‘race to the bottom’ in corporate tax revenues. The global minimum tax under Pillar Two is expected to contribute significantly to curbing this practice. Assuming that minimum taxation eliminates competition in statutory tax rates, tax competition is likely to continue. This is because countries then lower their effective tax rates by reducing tax enforcement. As audit strategies, unlike statutory tax rates, are not publicly observable, other countries cannot easily observe and can never verify them. However, countries reducing their tax enforcement adhere to a policy that implicitly encourages tax evasion. Hence, enforcement and observability problems can also be addressed indirectly by targeting their outcome – tax evasion. In most Member States, tax evasion is a predicate offence for money laundering that effectuates a very effective EU anti-money laundering (AML) regime. Its instruments cannot only serve as a tool to adequately address foreign tax evasion but also to reveal, monitor, and control, at least indirectly, other Member States’ efforts in the fight against tax evasion. AML legislation can therefore help to close a still unnoticed loophole in curbing tax competition that will not be addressed by introducing minimum taxation. Tax competition, money laundering, tax evasion, tax avoidance, tax enforcement, predicate offence, dual criminality, FATF, AMLA