Multilateral cooperation in international tax law

Since the 2008 financial crisis, multilateral cooperation in international tax law has developed at a fast pace. Nowadays, OECD and non-OECD countries have agreed to introduce international tax standards to tackle tax evasion, harmful tax competition, and aggressive tax planning. This chapter will address these standards with a focus on the interaction between different international, and supranational (mainly EU) organizations in the process. The first part of the chapter will describe the environment in which international taxation has evolved and explain its foundations. The second part will address multilateral cooperation in tax matters among countries and the role adopted by international organizations in the development of common tax standards. The third part of this chapter will address multilateral tax cooperation at the European Union (EU) level and explain how the EU adopts tax standards to create general principles of conduct for tax matters. The fourth part offers some critical comments regarding the current system of multilateral cooperation as well as some ideas about the future perspectives for multilateral tax cooperation. Finally, this chapter will provide some conclusions.