Global tax hubs

Global tax hubs are the black boxes of the international tax regime (ITR). The driving forces of their strategic interaction with other building blocks of the ITR remain undertheorized. This paper offers the first theory of tax hubs as a two-sided global marketplace. It argues that tax hubs are the matchmakers of the ITR. Indeed, international investors, tax hubs and endpoint jurisdictions play different yet interrelated roles within the same ecosystem, i.e., the two-sided platform. The theory is positive rather than normative. It aims to explain how the creeping marketization of the ITR, as part of international law, has been frequently instrumented worldwide over the last century. The paper provides a stress test to the theory’s explanatory power and its limitations. The conceptual framework of this piece rests on antitrust law and economic concepts.