Workshop on tax competition

Tax competition: How to meet the normative and political challenge?
Université de Montréal, 28-29 August 2008
Organised in collaboration with the CREUM (Centre de recherche en
éthique de l'Université de Montréal)

On the back of technological change and the end of exchange controls, capital mobility has over the last 30 or so years led to increasing tax competition. By lowering tax rates on individual savings as well as on corporate income, governments hope to attract portfolio investment and productive capital to their constituencies. Empirical research has shown that individual countries do not always benefit from tax competition, but might gain from cooperation. In determining what form this cooperation should take, two questions are of central importance :

1. What are the normative principles that should underlie such international cooperation on fiscal policy ? Simultaneously, what other, conflicting normative principles does such international cooperation have to respect ?
2. Which policies stand the best chance of implementing the selected normative principles in practice ?

The aim of the workshop is to critically assess existing answers to these questions and potentially to come up with new solutions. In bringing together researchers from economics, law, and philosophy, the workshop hopes to build on synergies between the different perspectives of these disciplines that have not been previously seized upon.

Pavillon Maximilien-Caron
3101, chemin de la Tour
Salle A-3464

Thursday, 28 August 2008
8.30
Coffee

8.45
Introduction

8.55-10.25
Reuven Avi-Yonah (Law School, University of Michigan)
"The OECD harmful tax competition report: a 10th anniversary retrospective"

10.30-12.00
Arthur Cockfield (Faculty of Law, Queen's University)
"Protecting Taxpayer Privacy Rights under Enhanced Cross-border Tax
Information Exchanges: Toward a Multilateral Taxpayer Bill of Rights"
&
Kimberley Brooks (Faculty of Law, McGill University)
"What is inter-nation equity?"

12.00-13.30
Lunch

13.30-15.00
Diane Ring (Law School, Boston College)
"Tax Sovereignty as a Window onto the Limits and Possibilities of Tax
Cooperation"
&
Peter Dietsch (Philosophy, Université de Montréal)
"Tax Competition and Sovereignty"

15.05-16.35
Navot Bar (Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP)
"Sharing the first bite – a new approach to tax treaties"
&
Thomas Rixen (Social Science Research Centre Berlin, WZB)
"Tax competition and inequality"

16.50-18.20
Philipp Genschel (Political Science, Jacobs University Bremen)
"Tax competition and democracy in the EU"


Friday, 29 August 2008

8.30-10.00
Richard Murphy (Tax Justice Network, UK)
"Finding the offshore world"

10.05-11.35
Ilan Benshalom (School of Law, Northwestern University)
"The poor at our gates: international taxation and global distributive justice"
&
Jean-Pierre Vidal (HEC Montréal)
"Does tax competition promote aggressive fiscal policies internationally?"

11.35-13.30
Lunch

13.30-15.00
Clément Carbonnier (Economics, Université de Cergy-Pontoise)
"Fiscal competition between decentralized jurisdictions – theoretical
and empirical evidence"
&
Ulrich van Suntum & Andreas Westermeier (Economics, University of Münster)
"Minimizing the Deadweight Loss: Income Tax vs. Death Tax"

15.05-16.35
François Claveau (graduate student, Universiteit van Rotterdam)
"Choosing our Story of Fiscal Interdependence"
&
Igor Paunovic (Comision Economica para América Latina y el Caribe)
"Tax competition versus tax differentiation – the case of Central
American countries"

16.50-18.20
Michael Webb (Political Science, University of Victoria)
"Understanding and Overcoming the neglect of distributional questions
in the OECD's response to international tax competition"