Når gode råd er dyre: Rådgivermagt og skat i Danmark

Når magten i Danmark skal udredes, bør der rettes fokus mod en særlig gruppe af eksperter, som rådgiver både stater, virksomheder og privatpersoner i skattespørgsmål. Som rådgivere har disse eksperter opnået en form for diskret magt: deres arbejde er afgørende for både udformningen og udmøntningen af vores skattesystem, men undersøges og diskuteres sjældent. Betydningen af rådgivernes magt er særligt relevant i lyset af deres bidrag til skattespekulation og stigende ulighed. I denne artikel giver vi et overblik over eksisterende forskning om disse eksperter og beskriver deres virke i Danmark samt udlægger, hvordan skatteeksperter udøver både instrumentel, strukturel og infrastrukturel magt. Vi foreslår en række forskningsspørgsmål, som fokuserer bredt på rådgivernes indflydelse på demokratiet, og som bør tages op i afdækningen af denne ”rådgivermagt”

The New Politics of Global Tax Governance: Taking Stock a Decade After the Financial Crisis

The financial crisis of 2007–2009 is now broadly recognised as a once-in-a-generation inflection point in the history of global economic governance. It has also prompted a reconsideration of established paradigms in international political economy (IPE) scholarship. Developments in global tax governance open a window onto these ongoing changes, and in this essay we discuss four recent volumes on the topic drawn from IPE and beyond, arguing against an emphasis on institutional stability and analyses that consider taxation in isolation. In contrast, we identify unprecedented changes in tax cooperation that reflect a significant contemporary reconfiguration of the politics of global economic governance writ large. To develop these arguments, we discuss the links between global tax governance and four fundamental changes underway in IPE: the return of the state through more activist policies; the global power shift towards large emerging markets; the politics of austerity and populism; and the digitalisation of the economy

Professional Competition in Global Tax Reform: Transparency in Global Wealth Chains

In the wake of the Great Recession, international corporate taxation has risen to the top of the global political agenda. With states seeking to shore up national fiscal systems, the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project has emerged as the key response in this regard. Among 15 action points, Action 13 on corporate tax transparency has been particularly prominent. By shaping the feasibility of corporate tax strategies and the information resources available to national tax authorities, the Action 13 policy recommendations will fundamentally reconfigure the context of corporate tax behaviour and global wealth chains, i.e. strategies and structures for wealth creation and protection in the global economy. How did these new critical rules come about? Unfortunately, little is known about the micro-level process, dynamics and actors of the BEPS project. This paper provides an original case study of the changing international tax system and the regulatory context of global wealth chains, based on an investigation of the professionals engaged in global tax reform. Drawing on observations, interviews and sequence analysis of professional careers, it studies the dynamics of the professional policy environment and identifies distinct career and knowledge trends. The paper shows that professional competition for prestige and knowledge played a central role in the complex, transnational policy process. Operating within a technical policy environment, far removed from high-level politics, professionals seeking to make their mark on new standards for corporate tax transparency mobilised expertise and network capital, shaping what could be discussed, the criteria for accepted arguments, and who was listened to in the policy process, thus critically affecting the final policy outcomes

Transparency

In 2013, the G-20 asked the OECD to develop new rules for corporate tax transparency, pushed by civil society activists. World leaders had agreed that increased transparency was urgently needed to help shore up national fiscal systems and alleviate social injustices. These new rules have wide-ranging economic and political consequences for the regulation of global wealth chains (GWCs). Tax transparency is a key factor in the level of information asymmetry between wealth chain ‘insiders’, such as corporations and tax advisers, and ‘outsiders’, such as tax authorities and civil society activists. This chapter discusses the ‘technicisation’ of the OECD policy process to define these new requirements, i.e. the embedding of highly political discussions in a specialised, expertise-intensive policy context. Technicisation constrained the post-crisis political momentum for expanded transparency of corporate wealth chains, but also helped normalize the idea of increased transparency as ‘risk assessment’ within the policy community. The chapter highlights three key dynamics of technicisation: policy insulation, re-framing and appropriateness judgments. Evidence is drawn from a qualitative content analysis of documents in the OECD policy debates on corporate tax transparency, and interviews with select informants involved in the policy process

Transnational Professional Competition in Fields and Ecologies

Transnationalisation of economies, organisations and societies have fundamentally reconfigured professional life. Dispersal of authority and activity away from national confines has spawned new transnational modes of organisation and competition amongst professionals. Studies of transnational professional competition explore how professionals broker normative, institutional and political change through these struggles in spaces ‘beyond the state’. This paper reviews existing work on transnational professional competition, focusing on two dominant streams: studies associated with Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and studies associated with Andrew Abbott’s ecological theory. It discusses the key theoretical dynamics and empirical focus of each stream. Furthermore, the paper reviews the ongoing debate between the two streams, drawing out proposals for mutual learning at the intersection of field and ecology studies. It is argued that such a closer exchange has potential to address points of contention and exploit points of convergence, enhancing understanding of specifically transnational professional relations, institutional change, social contexts and social structures

Transnational Struggles to Change International Taxation

In the contemporary age of global capitalism, international taxation – the taxation of income earned from cross-border economic activity – has become a high-stakes issue. International taxation touches upon the foundations of modern society as an arena for struggle between nation-states and other stakeholders concerning government revenues, economic markets, political ideas, and – above all – social change. However, most existing research on international taxation and, indeed, on the global political economy at large, is dedicated to studying the effects of stable structures and sees change through periodic snapshots of evolving orders. As a result, the dynamic processes enabling and governing change remain underexplored. This dissertation promotes a change-oriented approach to studying complex international contexts that unites insights from International Political Economy on global political-economic orders and from Sociology on micro-social struggles over power and authority. These insights enable an analysis of the dynamics of change in international taxation, and I set out a conceptual language emphasizing the modes, contexts, and sources of change . To develop my analysis, I apply a relational, qualitative and case-based methodology to study developments in international taxation across four levels: Global tax governance, the transnational field of corporate taxation, expert policymaking, and professional practice. I find that systemic change is underway in the core institutional foundations of global tax governance, namely an expansion of multilateral cooperation, institutionalized enforcement, and sovereignty-pooling by states. These changes are entwined with changes in state activism, geopolitical shifts, austerity, populism, and economic transformations. Those broad political changes reverberate in the transnational field of corporate taxation, which has seen a swift ascent of critical activist influence, politicization, destabilization of the dominant professional-technical logic, and increasing conflict over established social hierarchies. Expert policymaking has largely resisted the challenges of critical outsiders, but its historical isolation from popular politics and new expert resources is under scrutiny, opening possibilities for new patterns of influence in technical expert proceedings. In professional practice, the core of everyday work remains remarkably stable despite, and because of, broader social change, as professional identities are entwined with transnational (political) institutions

New Players, New Game: The role of the public and political debate in the development of action on international tax issues

The last few years have seen an enormous rise in public concern and dissatisfaction with the taxation of multinational companies (MNCs). In the wake of the financial crisis, public and political interest in corporate taxation rose significantly, with debt-challenged states looking to shore up national fiscal systems, and attention focused on corporate tax practices deemed overly aggressive or immoral. International tax rules as a matter of ‘front page’ public debate is an unusual situation; while taxation itself is always and everywhere a political topic, the fine workings of international taxation has largely been the domain of technical debates between experts. This is no longer the case: issues such as tax havens, transfer pricing, and structures like the “Double Irish Dutch Sandwich” have become topics of popular debates and campaigns. These issues have gone from being solely the subject of technical expert debates to being topics of public interest and popular media reporting. In consequence, new political initiatives have also progressed at an unexpectedly high pace. How has this rapid and unexpected change come about? Existing accounts of international tax change have emphasised the role played by international state relations, International Organisations’ standard-setting, the influence of transnational elites or the role of leaks in driving lawmaking. These analyses have often emphasised formal policymaking processes. Some accounts have zoomed in on the role of activists, in particular the Tax Justice Network, analysing the tactics and strategy of individual ‘outsider’ organisations in changing public and policy debates. This paper offers a complementary narrative of the dynamics of international tax change, looking at the role of various actors in shaping popular debates on international tax issues