Allison Christians
This piece is Professor Allison Christians’s response to Professor Adam H. Rosenzweig’s article, Thinking Outside the (Tax) Treaty. Professor Rosenzweig’s article is available in the 2012 Print Archive.
In this Reply to Professor Rosenzweig’s article, I seek to affirm that the instinct to look for an international tax BATNA is a good one because the international community appears to be mired in a
negotiated-agreement-or-nothing status quo, with no clear way to save the income tax from evisceration via aggressive tax avoidance and evasion. However, I am afraid that Professor Rosenzweig’s proposed BATNA will fall by the wayside as the United States appears intent on continuing the longstanding tradition of preferring negotiated agreements that use too many sticks and not enough carrots to try to control the international tax order to its own advantage.
Professor Christians holds the H. Heward Stikeman Chair in Tax Law, McGill University Faculty of Law.