Navigating taxation towards sustainability:Contradictions between social, gender, environmental, and economic ambitions, obligations and governance capacities in European tax law

In: Spangenberg , U , Mumford , A & Daly , S 2018 , Navigating taxation towards sustainability : Contradictions between social, gender, environmental, and economic ambitions, obligations and governance capacities in European tax law . Umea University FairTax website .

Abstract

This paper analyses existing tax competences in EU law, in the light of European and international obligations, and their evolution since the initial founding of the European Economic Community. It approaches this task not just from the perspective of competences, but examines values, objectives, obligations and actual governance capacities underpinning the implementation and realisation of these aims and duties in the field of taxation. The analysis is linked to discourses addressing sustainability gaps within EU taxation law and policy, in particular: a prevailing focus on economic growth; a lack of EU-level environmental taxation; an absence of tax measures that tackle, much less consider inequalities in income and wealth; and, persisting socio-economic inequalities between men and women. The concept of sustainable development features prominently in the objectives of the European Union and is closely linked to the function of the internal market. The implications of sustainability for legal obligations, however, remain unclear, and particularly so in the context of taxation. This paper provides an outline of the current legal framework for positive and negative integration of taxation, and considers the evolution of values, objectives and obligations in European and International law with a particular focus on the legal concept of sustainable development. From this basis, it examines legislative capacities to address the economic, ecological and social dimensions of sustainable development in the area of taxation and offers preliminary options for the amendment of hard and soft law mechanisms, so as fully to support European values and objectives in the field of taxation.