The Intricacies of Tax & Globalization

Abstract

This article reviews Avi-Yonah, Sartori, and Marian’s Global Perspectives on Income Taxation Law (Oxford, 2011). It outlines the book’s key features and strengths in the quest for understanding the effect of globalization on taxation. In this process, the article also looks into available data to explore global trends in taxation over the past three and a half decades to evaluate whether and to what extent globalization leads to convergence or divergence of national tax policies. The article concludes that as Global Perspectives on Income Taxation Law illustrates, while globalization may lead to at least some observed trends in taxation—including the flattening of income tax rates and the move toward the taxation of less mobile sources, and thus more regressive, tax schemes—there is clearly far more than meets the eye. Here, Global Perspectives on Income Taxation Law provides a valuable reference for how different countries confront challenges that are common among tax systems. Keeping in mind that differences among national tax systems nonetheless exist and understanding how tax systems converge and diverge constitutes a vital first step toward crystallizing the necessary actions to better coordinate between multiple tax systems while retaining national sovereignty in tax design. Over the long run, this could also lead to better evaluation of the net benefit or cost of globalization, allowing policymakers to respond effectively to the fiscal challenges that globalization presents.