In their deliberations at the League of Nations, delegates actually addressed
the issue of tax evasion and avoidance. The concern was that the
co-existence of different national tax systems and the removal of obstacles
to international capital flows would increasingly enable capital flight.
A commissioned group of experts argued that a functionally adequate response to the problem of evasion and avoidance must be multilateral;
otherwise there would be capital flight to those countries not party to the
agreement (League of Nations, 1925: 24–26). But most member states did
not want to subscribe to such a solution. Beyond the fact that some states
did not want to engage in information exchange at all (see e.g. the Swiss
position: League of Nations, 1928: 14–15), they generally cautioned that
the ‘disadvantage of placing any obstacles in the way of the international
circulation of capital, which is one of the conditions of public prosperity
and world economic reconstruction’, should be carefully weighed against
the goal of fighting tax evasion (League of Nations, 1927: 5). Measures
against evasion should be premised on effective double tax relief (see e.g.
the position of Sweden: League of Nations, 1928: 14).10