While there is no constructivist account of the entire trajectory of global
tax cooperation, Sharman (2006) addresses the failure of the OECD project
on harmful tax practices. He argues that big countries were unable to
effectively pressure small tax havens to behave as they wished, because
neither military coercion nor economic sanctions were in line with generally
shared notions of appropriate behaviour among states. In particular,
the OECD, whose authority derives from its status as an impartial expert
bureaucracy devoted to the liberal market ideology, could not convincingly
argue against (tax) competition. This is plausible.
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But are the norms of appropriate behaviour the best explanation for the
failed campaign? Sharman himself acknowledges that in order to answer
in the affirmative competing hypotheses have to be rejected. With respect
to rationalist accounts, he argues that their two most important predictions
do not hold. First, even though there is massive room for side payments
because big countries would gain more from effectively curbing competition
than tax havens lost and could thus easily compensate them, no such
deal has been struck. Second, this failure to strike a deal can also not be
explained by the capture of some big country governments by business
interests.
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Both claims can be refuted. In light of the substitutability of virtual
and real tax competition, the room for side payments is not as big as Sharman suggests. If big country governments manage to put tax havens
out of business by preventing profit shifting, the result may be real tax
competition, leaving governments less (or a potentially negative) surplus
to compensate small countries. Even if some room for side payments remained,
Sharman’s second claim would also have to be true to disprove
the account proposed here. A full rebuttal requires detailed analysis of
the available evidence, which space constraints preclude here. Suffice it
to point out that the majority of international tax observers consider this
claim to be misplaced and direct readers to appropriate counter evidence
on business lobbying in the US (e.g. Ring, 2008, 183–201; Easson, 2004,
1052–59).17 Consequently, my rationalist account cannot be rejected by the
norm-based argument.