Center Scholar: David Hasen

Professor Hasen is researching the idea of neutrality in international taxation. A large body of scholarship has attempted to identify and defend appropriate norms for ensuring that tax rules for cross-border arrangements are "neutral" with respect to economic decision making. Most of the scholarship in the area treats taxes as pure costs that do not provide identifiable benefits to those who pay them. In his judgment, this approach fails to appreciate the extent to which higher taxes may improve social welfare, and, conversely, the extent to which tax competition can seriously impair the ability of developing countries to raise their standards of living. In his scholarship, Professor Hasen will develop the idea that it is more helpful to consider taxes as, in part, paying for identifiable goods. From this perspective, rules that encourage higher taxes may actually be welfare-enhancing on a worldwide basis, even though these rules may introduce both rate differentials among countries and higher total tax collections worldwide.

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