Law Commons^™

Reforming International Investment Law To Advance Tax Justice, Madeleine Songy

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Reforming International Investment Law to Advance Tax Justice" highlights the detrimental impact of current international investment treaties on tax justice and sustainable development objectives. It argues that Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanisms often impede states' ability to implement effective tax policies by allowing foreign investors to challenge tax measures. The brief recommends a comprehensive reform of international investment law to ensure that investment treaties support rather than undermine tax justice. This can include eliminating ISDS provisions, drafting new treaties that safeguard the sovereign right of states to regulate taxation, and facilitating cooperation among states to reform tax systems at national, …

Tax And Arbitration, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

When fiscal measures intertwine arbitration, undue mystification sometimes follows. To enhance analytic clarity, tax-related arbitration might be divided into three parts. The first derives from ordinary commercial disputes that become laced with incidental tax questions. A corporate acquisition, for example, might carry tax consequences which in turn implicate contract claims or defences presented to an arbitral tribunal for resolution. The second genre of tax-related arbitration arises in respect of cross-border investment disputes. Rightly or wrongly, foreign investors often perceive host-country fiscal enactments as discriminatory, unfair, or tantamount to expropriation, thus violating international commitments. Finally, arbitration comes into play under income …

The Luxembourg Effect: Patent Boxes And The Limits Of International Cooperation, Lilian V. Faulhaber

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article uses patent boxes, which reduce taxes on income from patents and other IP assets, to illustrate the fact that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice has a longer reach than has previously been recognized. This article argues that, along with having effects within the European Union, the ECJ’s decisions can also have effects on countries outside of the EU. In the direct tax context, the ECJ’s jurisprudence has hampered the ability of both EU and non-EU countries to police international tax avoidance.

In 2015, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) proposed restrictions on patent …

Charitable Giving, Tax Expenditures, And Direct Spending In The United States And The European Union, Lilian V. Faulhaber

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article compares the ways in which the United States and the European Union limit the ability of state-level entities to subsidize their own residents, whether through direct subsidies or through tax expenditures. It uses four recent charitable giving cases decided by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to illustrate the ECJ’s evolving tax expenditure jurisprudence and argues that, while this jurisprudence may suggest a new and promising model for fiscal federalism, it may also have negative social policy implications. It also points out that the court analyzes direct spending and tax expenditures under different rubrics despite their economic equivalence …

Sovereignty, Integration, And Tax Avoidance In The European Union: Striking The Proper Balance, Lilian Faulhaber

Faculty Scholarship

As the need to raise revenue becomes more pressing and public opposition to tax avoidance increases, the European Court of Justice has made it more difficult for the twenty-seven Member States of the European Union to prevent tax avoidance and shape fiscal policy. This article introduces the new anti-avoidance doctrine of the European Court of Justice and analyzes it from the perspective of taxpayers, Member States and the European Union legal order as a whole. This doctrine is problematic becasue it has created a legislative vacuum in Europe. No European Union institution has the authority to regulate direct taxation without …

Sovereignty, Integration And Tax Avoidance In The European Union: Striking The Proper Balance, Lilian V. Faulhaber

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As the need to raise revenue becomes more pressing and public opposition to tax avoidance increases, the European Court of Justice has made it more difficult for the twenty-seven Member States of the European Union to prevent tax avoidance and shape fiscal policy. This article introduces the new anti-avoidance doctrine of the European Court of Justice and analyzes it from the perspective of taxpayers, Member States and the European Union legal order as a whole. This doctrine is problematic becasue it has created a legislative vacuum in Europe. No European Union institution has the authority to regulate direct taxation without …

The New Poor At Our Gates: Global Justice Implications For International Trade And Tax Law, Ilan Benshalom

Faculty Working Papers

The Article explains why international trade and tax arrangements should advance global wealth redistribution in a world of enhanced economic integration. Despite the indisputable importance of global poverty and inequality, contemporary political philosophy stagnates over the controversy of whether distributive justice obligations should extend beyond the political framework of the nation state. This stagnation results from the difficulty of reconciling liberal impartiality with notions of state sovereignty and accountability. The Article offers an alternative approach that bypasses the controversy of the current debate. It argues that international trade results in relational distributive duties when domestic parties engage in transactions with …

Taxation As A Global Socio-Legal Phenomenon, Allison Christians, Steven Dean, Diane Ring, Adam H. Rosenzweig

Faculty Scholarship

This essay makes a proposal that may not be controversial among those with a particular interest in international law, but may be less accepted among those primarily interested in tax law: that international social and institutional structures shape, and are shaped by, historical and contemporary domestic policy decisions. As a result, to incorporate these lessons, tax scholarship should turn to fields such as international relations, organizational theory, and political philosophy to provide a broader framework for understanding the rapid changes that are taking place in tax policy and politics in the United States and around the world.

A Comprehensive Solution For A Targeted Problem: A Critique Of The Eu’S Home State Taxation And Ccctb Initiatives, Ilan Benshalom

Faculty Working Papers

This Article examines the European Commission's Home State Taxation and CCCTB initiatives. It argues that both proposals undermine the long-term objective of attaining a consolidated European corporate tax regime. It suggests an alternative strategy, which offers a comprehensive formulary-tax-allocation-solution in one of the hard to tax sectors, such as the financial sector. This strategy requires more efforts and political risk-taking, but would better promote the long-term objective of a consolidated EU corporate tax regime.

An edited version of this article is scheduled to be published in a future issue of European Taxation (an IBFD publication).

Philosopher Kings And International Tax: A New Approach To Tax Havens, Tax Flight, And International Tax Cooperation, Steven Dean

Faculty Scholarship

Tax flight treaties could help to solve the $50 billion-a-year problem that tax flight (the evasion of income taxes through the use of offshore tax havens) poses for the United States. Tax flight treaties would offer tax havens a substantial portion of the increased tax revenues that they could generate by providing the United States with the enforcement assistance it needs. Those payments, potentially representing as much as half of the added tax revenue produced by tax flight treaties (and in all probability an amount that is greater than any GDP gains attributable to eliminating waste and other economic distortions …