Part 1 - AL-Tax

International Taxation Handbookempirical results of his analysis of tax competition in the EU. The discussionincludes particular responses by European Union countries to the tax competitionand tax coordination dilemmas. This discussion rounds off the theoreticalsection of the book and acts as a springboard for the next part by discussing specificresponses to the tax harmonization agenda through the institutions ofInternational Financial Reporting Standards and the European Company Statute.We then go on to outline various dimensions of corporate tax competition withinthe world’s largest economic union. In ‘Corporate Taxation in Europe: CompetitivePressure and Cooperative Targets’, Professors Carlo Garbarino and Paolo M.Panteghini make the important observation that nations must balance both shorttermand medium-term goals, as all the while they consider the effect of their policieson their economic union partners. They observe that the formation of a unionboth creates for more intimate competition while at the same time creating theopportunity for greater coordination. These strange bedfellows, when combinedwith policy learning and with competition from outside the union, create adynamic policy mix. The authors use these insights to discuss the various ways theEU and the USA have embarked upon their international taxation policy reforms.Professor Jenny Ligthart focuses on differential savings rates within the EuropeanUnion in her paper entitled ‘The Economics of Taxing Cross-border SavingsIncome: An Application to the EU Savings Tax’. She observes that innovations ininternational treaties and alliances are having the effect of reducing a country’s taxpolicy potency. There has been a growing literature in the institutional arrangementsof tax information sharing (see, for instance, the Gregoriou–Vita–Alipaper found elsewhere in this volume), there has been little work describing theeconomics of increased savings mobility. This chapter provides an excellent discussionof the political economy of global financial and taxation informationsharing, a problem particularly vexing given the competing desire for domestictaxation autonomy.In ‘Tax Misery and Tax Happiness: A Comparative Study of Selected AsianCountries’, Professor Robert W. McGee looks at public finance aspects of tax burdenswithin the Asian countries. The paper explores whether there has been aconvergence of tax systems within these countries, and explores whether varioustax policies are associated with greater social welfare.Finally, we look at the broader global implications of increased capital andlabor mobility. The countries outside the USA and the EU are in an interestingposition. They have the opportunity to either reform or create their national taxationregimes based on the evolution of US and EU taxation principles. At thesame time, however, they are able to create truly modern systems that respond to8