Global Britain: Influencing tax policy

Abstract

At first sight, the UK’s prominent role in the ‘transformation’ of international tax in recent years is an exemplar of Global Britain at work: using its influence on the world stage to support stronger, more effective international tax cooperation. Arguably it was at the London G20 Summit of 2009 that the transformation towards more intensive multilateral tax cooperation began. Successive British prime ministers and chancellors, before and after the Brexit vote, gave vocal support to ambitious Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) initiatives that began there. In particular, the UK sought to use its chairing of the G8 in 2013 and G7 in 2021 to achieve breakthroughs in OECD negotiations. Yet, in multilateral tax cooperation the UK has historically been sceptical towards the creation of new soft and hard law institutions. It opposed the creation of tax committees at the UN after the second world war and again in the 1960s; it was hostile to the OEEC Committee that became the OECD’s Committee on Fiscal Affairs, as well as to its