The International Crisis in Taxation: A Critical Analysis

This doctoral dissertation investigates from a philosophical point of view the contemporary crisis in international tax law. In the past decades it has become clear how multinational corporations, and persons of considerable wealth, are organizing and planning their taxes to pay as little as possible. This is achieved by using mechanisms such as for example double non-taxation (i.e. the exploitation of double tax treaties between different countries to avoid paying taxes in either country). These findings have caused the legitimacy of the international tax framework to be questioned by specialists as well as by the larger public. The wide-spread tax avoidance has not been without answer and there have been efforts from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with the formulation of an action plan against Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), as well as the European Union with the formulation of the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directives (ATAD) to combat the issue. In this dissertation I identify two fundamental notions that run throughout the whole debate: sovereignty of state (a) and the common good (b).