Mark Pack

From the Mirrlees review into designing tax systems:

Despite some predictions to the contrary, countries are not being forced inexorably to tax less in an increasingly globalized and competitive world economy. Between 1975 and 2008, taxes rose as a proportion of national income in virtually every OECD country. On average, the tax take rose from 29.4% to 34.8% of national income. In no OECD country was there a significant fall in the tax take over this period…

Within the total tax take, we might expect that governments would find it more difficult to raise taxes from internationally mobile companies and people. In fact, revenue from corporation taxes has more than held up over the past 40 years—corporate income taxes accounted for 9% of tax revenues across the OECD in 1965, 8% in 1985, and 10% in 2008.