Taxing the powerful, the rise of populism and the crisis in Europe: the case for the EU Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base

Abstract

Contemporary populism is rooted in a crisis of legitimacy. Corporate tax avoidance by multinationals is one cause of that crisis. Although states tend to be increasingly formally committed to tackling avoidance, they do so in a system that promotes contradictory sets of behaviour. This tends to undermine attempts to solve the problem of avoidance unless a more transformative collective approach is taken. Ironically, despite its own democratic deficit, the European Commission has taken a leading role in promoting such a solution: the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB). In this paper, I set out the case for ‘unitary taxation’ based on the CCCTB and state some of its current problems. The problem of corporation tax raises a basic issue in terms of who is sovereignty for, and solving the problem provides an important contribution to legitimacy of both the state and the EU.