The Intricacies of Tax and 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.  Sagit Leviner is an associate professor of law at SUNY Buffalo Law School and an overseas affiliated Faculty with Ono Academic College Faculty of Law in Israel. The author is thankful for the insightful contribution of Eric Toder to this review. Valuable comments on and discussions of earlier versions of this review were also offered by Yariv Brauner, Tsilly Dagan, David Gliksberg, Victor Fleischer, Diane Ring, Kirk Stark, Nancy Staudt and the participants of the Interdisciplinary Center Faculty of Law International Tax Symposium, Herzliya, Israel (April 3013), the Hebrew University Faculty of Law Tax Colloquium, Jerusalem, Israel (January 2013), the 6th Annual Joint Conference of Columbia University Law School and Ono Academic College, Kiryat Ono, Israel, (June 2012), and the International Society for New Institutional Economics Annual Conference, USC Gould School of Law, Los Angeles, CA (June 2012). SUNY Buffalo law student Vanessa Glushefski provided excellent research assistance.