Taxation is high on the political agenda of all major industrial countries. And current debates about taxes are dominated by references to foreign models. The contributors to this book explore, for the first time in historical perspective, how ideas about taxation were transferred between and within countries from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. They send out a word of caution to current policymakers looking for straightforward solutions from abroad.
PART I: INTRODUCTION
Global Debates about Taxation: Transfers of Ideas, the Challenge of Political Legitimacy and the Paradoxes of State-Building; H.Nehring & F.Schui
PART II: CHALLENGES OF WAR AND OCCUPATION
Regional Exchanges and Patterns of Taxation in Eighteenth Century Europe: The Case of the Italian Cadastres; C.Lebeau
Learning from French Experience? The Prussian Régie Tax Administration, 1766-86; F.Schui
The Napoleonic Empire in Italy: The Transfer of Tax Ideas and Political Legitimacy (1802-1814); A.Grab
PART III: FEDERAL POLITIES
The Transfer of Ideas about Taxation in a Federal State: The Example of the German Empire 1875-1914; A.Thier
The Paradoxes of State-Building: Transnational Expertise and the Income Tax Debates in the United States and Germany, c.1880-1914; H.Nehring
Harmonization through Competition? The Evolution of Taxation in Postwar Europe; F.M.B.Lynch
PART IV: EMPIRES AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
Tax Transfers: Britain and its Empire, 1848, 1914; M.Daunton
The Transfer of Tax Ideas during the 'Reverse Course' on the US Occupation of Japan; W.E.Brownlee
Tax Policy Transfer to Developing Countries: Politics, Institutions and Experts; M.Stewart
The Flat Tax: Fiscal Revolution or Policy Diffusion?; J.J.Thorndike