Senior Partner | Strategic Consulting, M&A, Legal Advisory, Financial & Tax Planning, Wealth and Estate Structures
This is a great paper with a great question to discuss. The standard relationship between individuals and governments tends to be pretty static, while an increasing number of people, especially HNWI, tend to live their lives and conduct their business in a much more fluid way. If one has family members and friends in multiple countries, work flexible hours in flexible locations and serves clients in very diverse parts of the world, both his personal taxes and his professional services will continue to be attracted in a competitive way by many places, given that local consumption and related taxes help generate incremental local wealth and government revenue. This is valid and moral. The global taxation pillars should not, in my view, try to limit or “punish” such dynamics, but rather consider and pursue a better balance between income and consumption taxation in the generation of funds for public budgets.
very interesting paper by Wolfgang Schön at Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance