Pareto-improving indirect tax coordination and tax diversity

Abstract

Abstract Coordination in tax matters, in the EU and elsewhere, has been largely driven by the movement of taxes towards some common level and, therefore, towards tax uniformity. Making use of a perfectly competitive general equilibrium framework of international trade in which governments provide global public goods, it is shown that, starting from a Nash equilibrium, there exist strict Pareto-improving multilateral tax reforms that are consistent with tax diversity.