What the Baucus Plan Reveals About Tax Competition

Conventional wisdom explains tax competition as an external constraint on lawmaking that can only be curbed through multinational cooperative efforts to eliminate beggar-thy-neighbor tax policies. But the international tax reform plan recently introduced by Senator Baucus squarely confronts this conventional wisdom and reveals some very disturbing observations about tax competition: that it is as much a supply-side as a demand-side problem (luring strategies require a supply of otherwise tax-favored capital), that governments have always had the power to counter this problem, and that accordingly, political will is the reason why tax competition has become the overwhelming force that it is today. The Baucus plan demonstrates that the US has been a major force in creating the conditions for global tax competition and implies that the US could, should it chose to, act unilaterally to put a stop to the practice