Rosenzweig: Integrating Tax and Development Policy

Adam H. Rosenzweig (Washington U.), Integrating Tax and Development Policy (Jotwell) (reviewing Mitchell Kane (Virginia), Bootstraps and Poverty Traps: Tax Treaties as Novel Tools for Development Finance, 29 Yale J. on Reg. 255 (2012)):

A quiet, but powerful, movement seems to be emerging in the field of international tax – the explicit recognition that development policy is integral to any analysis of international tax policy. Put differently, if the initial distribution of resources affects the return on resources, which itself affects the taxation of resources and thus the provision of public goods (which themselves feed back into the return on resources), distribution must be incorporated into the efficiency analysis of international taxation rather than thought of as a second, unrelated “fairness” step. Mitchell Kane contributes to this evolution in his thoughtful new article. ... [E]xpressly incorporating distribution of resources, capital flows, and public goods into the tax competition analysis, and specifically into the tax treaty analysis, in the sophisticated manner Kane does, represents another valuable step in this important evolution of international tax law scholarship.