The recent furore around the Budget has shown that tax changes can still cause widespread debate among the public businesses industry and politicians alike. This can be a good sign that democracy is working well as the resulting consensus can inform policy makers. However this is dependent on the policy makers hearing much of the discussion and assumes that the government does indeed determine tax policy – something that for much of time would have been considered axiomatic.
However in the last few years we have witnessed a number of international organisations setting tax policy. For instance whilst the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been playing a significant role in developing a framework on transfer pricing regulations their guidelines are now being...