Current debates about taxes are dominated by references to foreign models. The contributors to this book explore how ideas about taxation were transferred between and within countries from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. They send out a word of caution to current policymakers looking for straightforward solutions from abroad.
Global Debates About Taxation
PART I: INTRODUCTION Global Debates about Taxation: Transfers of Ideas, the Challenge of Political Legitimacy and the Paradoxes of State-Building; H.Nehring & F.Schui PART II: CHALLENGES OF WAR AND OCCUPATION Regional Exchanges and Patterns of Taxation in Eighteenth Century Europe: The Case of the Italian Cadastres; C.Lebeau Learning from French Experience? The Prussian Régie Tax Administration, 1766-86; F.Schui The Napoleonic Empire in Italy: The Transfer of Tax Ideas and Political Legitimacy (1802-1814); A.Grab PART III: FEDERAL POLITIES The Transfer of Ideas about Taxation in a Federal State: The Example of the German Empire 1875-1914; A.Thier The Paradoxes of State-Building: Transnational Expertise and the Income Tax Debates in the United States and Germany, c .1880-1914; H.Nehring Harmonization through Competition? The Evolution of Taxation in Postwar Europe; F.M.B.Lynch PART IV: EMPIRES AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS Tax Transfers: Britain and its Empire, 1848, 1914; M.Daunton The Transfer of Tax Ideas during the 'Reverse Course' on the US Occupation of Japan; W.E.Brownlee Tax Policy Transfer to Developing Countries: Politics, Institutions and Experts; M.Stewart The Flat Tax: Fiscal Revolution or Policy Diffusion?; J.J.Thorndike