The power politics of international tax cooperation : why Luxembourg and Austria accepted automatic exchange of information on foreign account holders' interest income

Abstract

Theories of tax competition predict that small countries competing with large countries benefit, as they find it relatively easy to substitute revenue lost in a tax cut with revenue gained from incoming foreign tax base. If small countries can only lose from tax co-operation, why are Luxembourg and Austria bound to agree to a revised EU Savings Tax Directive that will oblige them to automatically provide information on foreign account holders’ interest income to residence countries? Putting emphasis on the neglected issue of power, I show that Luxembourg and Austria were first coerced into bilateral agreements on automatic exchange of information by the United States, which then activated a most-favored nation clause contained in the EU Directive on Administrative Co-operation in Tax Matters. As a result, the two countries were under a legal obligation to also extend greater co-operation to EU partners.