Does Europeanization lead to policy convergence? The role of the Single Market in shaping national tax policies

In this contribution, I review and test the quantitative and qualitative evidence on tax policy convergence for four major fields of taxation in European Union (EU) and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. I interpret the empirical results using major causal mechanisms observed in the literature on international policy convergence. I find that competition and co-ordination alone are insufficient to explain the role of Europeanization of national tax systems. In direct taxation, competition is enhanced by forms of supranational imposition, whereas indirect taxation co-ordination efforts seemed to be enhanced by policy learning.