Oei Presents Global Tax Decluttering Today At Missouri

Shu-Yi Oei (Duke; Google Scholar) presents Global Tax Decluttering, 77 U.C. L.J. __ (2025) (with Diane Ring (Boston College; Google Scholar)) at Missouri today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage:

Major global players—most prominently the OECD and European Union—have recently begun advocating that countries “declutter” their tax systems to tidy up, repeal, or eliminate pre-existing domestic anti-abuse tax rules. The reasoning is that these country-level rules are now duplicative or burdensome in light of a new global tax agreement spearheaded by the OECD and G20 and multilaterally agreed upon in 2021 by over 140 countries. Yet, this new multilateral regime is still in the process of being rolled out and is entirely untested.

In this article, we examine this recently emergent “tax decluttering movement” and present an analytical framework for understanding it. We show how the recent push for tax decluttering belies a convergence of interests among several powerful actors (international organizations, certain countries and regional blocs, and businesses interests).

We argue that tax decluttering holds important political economy implications, including implications for the allocation of tax lawmaking power between the transnational and national levels; for the allocation of power between competing international organizations in global tax policymaking; for competition among countries looking to attract business and investment by reducing tax burdens; and for geopolitical contests among competing blocs and country groups. We ultimately argue that tax decluttering should be done with great caution, in light of its significant risks, and we provide specific suggestions for how legislatures should approach decluttering.

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to tax posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.