Table Of ContentGlobal Debates about Taxation
Also by Florian Schui
EARLY DEBATES ABOUT INDUSTRY: Voltaire and his Contemporaries
Global Debates about
Taxation
Edited by
Holger Nehring and Florian Schui
Selection and editorial matter © Holger Nehring and
Florian Schui 2007
© Individual Chapters © Contributors 2007
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-8747-1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Global debates about taxation / edited by Holger Nehring and
Florian Schui.
p.cm.
Based on a conference on “The transfer of ideas about taxation”held Sept.
16–18,2005 in Cambridge,England.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-54147-8
1.Taxation–History–Congresses. 2.Finance,Public–International
cooperation–Congresses. 3.Finance,Public–Cross-cultural studies–Congresses.
I.Nehring,Holger,1974– II.Schui,Florian,1973–
HJ2250.G56 2007
336.2–dc22 2006051744
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
Contents
List of Tables vii
List of Figures viii
Preface ix
Notes on the Contributors x
1 Introduction: Global Debates about Taxation: Transfers of
Ideas, the Challenge of Political Legitimacy and the
Paradoxes of State-building 1
Holger Nehring and Florian Schui
Part I Challenges of War and Occupation 19
2 Regional Exchanges and Patterns of Taxation in Eighteenth-
Century Europe: the Case of the Italian Cadastres 21
Christine Lebeau
3 Learning from French Experience? The Prussian RégieTax
Administration, 1766–86 36
Florian Schui
4 The Napoleonic Empire in Italy: the Transfer of Tax Ideas and
Political Legitimacy, 1802–14 61
Alexander Grab
Part II Federal Polities 81
5 The Transfer of Ideas about Taxation in a Federal State: the
Example of the German Empire, 1875–1914 83
Andreas Thier
6 The Paradoxes of State-Building: Transnational Expertise
and the Income Tax Debates in the United States and
Germany, c.1880–1914 97
Holger Nehring
7 Harmonization through Competition? The Evolution of
Taxation in Post-War Europe 116
Frances M. B. Lynch
v
vi Contents
Part III Empires and International Organizations 135
8 Tax Transfers: Britain and its Empire, 1848–1914 137
Martin Daunton
9 The Transfer of Tax Ideas during the ‘Reverse Course’ of the US
Occupation of Japan 158
W. Elliot Brownlee
10 Tax Policy Transfer to Developing Countries: Politics,
Institutions and Experts 182
Miranda Stewart
11 The Flat Tax: Fiscal Revolution or Policy Diffusion? 201
Joseph J. Thorndike
Index 219
List of Tables
4.1 Budget allocations (in millions of lire), 1804–11 66
4.2 Gross income from land tax, 1801–12 68
4.3 Land tax, personal tax and indirect taxes, 1804–11 74
11.1 European flat taxes, 1994–2005 207
vii
List of Figures
7.1 Total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP 126
7.2 Taxes on personal income as a percentage of GDP 128
7.3 Effective tax rates of a single person, without children,
on average industrial wage 130
viii
Preface
This volume grew out of a conference on ‘The Transfer of Ideas about Taxation’,
held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and the Humanities
(CRASSH), Cambridge, on 16–18 September 2005. The conference itself was
a stimulating exchange of ideas, comprising scholars from continental Europe
and the United States.
For making this possible, we should like to thank CRASSH, in particular
Ludmilla Jordanova; the Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge, par-
ticularly its directors Emma Rothschild and Gareth Stedman Jones; as well as
the Trevelyan Fund of the History Faculty of the University of Cambridge for
providing us with generous funding. Thanks are also due to Catherine Hurley,
Nick Swift and Gemma Tyler for the excellent organization of the more prac-
tical matters.
Ha-Joon Chang (Cambridge) gave an excellent keynote address which pro-
vided us many themes for discussion. Not least, we should like to thank the
commentators of the panels, Sunil Amrith (Cambridge), Peter Becker (Linz,
Austria) and Christopher M. Clark (Cambridge), as well as the other partici-
pants for such stimulating interventions.
We are also very grateful to Julia Moses (Cambridge) for her sterling proof-
reading efforts. Not least, we would also like to thank Amanda Hamilton at
Palgrave for commissioning this volume and Katie Button, Alec Dubber and
everyone else at Palgrave who was involved with the production process for
their dedication and friendliness.
Holger Nehring
Florian Schui
Sheffield/Egham, July 2006
ix
