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Herding Cats and Taming Tax Havens: The US Strategy of ‘Not In My Backyard’
Author(s) -
Palan Ronen,
Wigan Duncan
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
global policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.602
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1758-5899
pISSN - 1758-5880
DOI - 10.1111/1758-5899.12135
Subject(s) - yard , herding , law and economics , business , economics , political economy , political science , international trade , law , history , quantum mechanics , physics , archaeology
Abstract Recent G8 and G20 statements, combined with a number of OECD campaigns have given an impression that the world has entered a phase of re‐invigorated multilateral efforts to combat tax abuse. We argue that this impression is not entirely mistaken, but the centre of gravity in the battle against tax abuse generally, and tax havens specifically, is shifting decidedly towards unilateral approaches. The US is, in particular, in flexing its muscles attempting to ensure that the various mechanisms used to evade taxation and perpetrated through tax havens have little impact on its ‘back yard’. We call this the ‘Not In My Back Yard’ (NIMBY) principle of regulation, which underpins the new Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). The NIMBY principle, we argue, is likely to be adopted by other large political entities.