The rise of the EU in international tax policy

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the professional and organizational interactions within European Union (EU) tax policy networks as a dimension of the EU’s rise to prominence in international tax policy. It outlines the professional-organizational scenery of international tax policy, and its historical evolution, emphasizing the dominance of the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The chapter discusses the role of the European Union in international tax policy, including the basis of its competencies and the recent transformations of EU tax networks in the post-crisis context. It offers an examination of the policy case, including the changing interactions of professionals and organizations in the EU tax policy context, in comparison with the OECD, and specifically an analysis of these changes in the case of corporate tax transparency and country-by-country reporting (CBCR). The idea of CBCR for multinational corporations on taxation, essentially nationally segmented disclosure of tax-related information, had initially been intermittently discussed in the 1960s and 1970s at the United Nations.