The new politics of global tax governance: taking stock a decade after the financial crisis

Figures & data

Table 1. Shifts in the global political economy and global tax governance.

Political economic shift	Global tax governance shift
The return of the state	Greater willingness to act unilaterally has created conditions for sovereignty-constraining cooperation.
Global power shifts	The OECD has adopted institutional innovations that give non-members the right to varying degrees of participation.
Austerity, populism and expertise	Political engagement with international tax rules has reduced the autonomy of the tax policy expert community.
The digital economy	Existing rules produce perverse outcomes when applied to new digital business models, which has led to open distributional conflict, notably between the EU and US.

Table 2. Major global tax governance reform attempts pre- and post-crisis.

	Dates	Nature of change	Inclusive multilateralism	Institutionalised enforcement	Sovereignty-pooling
Tax avoidance: transfer pricing guidelines (Radaelli 1998)	1994–1995	Moderate	None: OECD only.	None: self-implementing.	None: adapts existing principles.
Tax evasion: harmful tax practices (Webb 2004; Sharman 2006)	1997–2003	Small	None: EU/OECD/G7 only.	None: sanctions threat proves hollow.	None: weak standards and bilateralism.
Distribution of the tax base: digital economy (Cockfield 2005)	1998–2002	Small	Some: OECD with ad hoc involvement of some non-member states.	None: largely unimplemented.	None: adapts existing principles.
Tax evasion: common reporting standard (Hakelberg 2016a)	2009–2014	Radical	Some: rule-setting by G20, implementation by over 100 countries.	Substantial: credible threat of G20 sanctions.	Substantial: strong standards and a multilateral treaty.
Tax avoidance: Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (Hearson & Prichard, 2018; Lips 2018)	2013–2017	Moderate	Some: rule-setting by G20, implementation by over 100 countries.	Some: credible threat of G20 sanctions for some minimum standards.	Some: mixture of strong and weak standards and a multilateral treaty.
Distribution of the tax base: digital economy	2013–present	Potentially radical	Substantial: rule-setting and implementation by over 100 countries.	Potentially: may include minimum standards.	Potentially: may include fundamental reforms and a multilateral treaty.

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