Francis Weyzig

Tax, finance and development

PhD dissertation

I completed a PhD research on taxation and development, analysing effects of Dutch tax policy on taxation of multinationals in developing countries. Several aspects of Dutch corporate tax policy have unintended and negative effects on developing countries. In my research, I analyse the nature and size of these effects on different developing countries.

You can read about the results of my PhD research in the Financieele Dagblad of 3 June 2013. In the FD article, I explained that the Dutch tax treaty network facilitated treaty shopping on a large scale. I argued that the system of bilateral tax treaties is seriously flawed and that in the short term, anti-abuse provisions would help to address this problem.

Since then, the Netherlands has added such provisions to 15 tax treaties with developing countries (and counting), Moreover, the G20/OECD Inclusive Framework has developed a multilateral agreement to repair tax treaties around the world in a systematic way.

The electronic version of my PhD dissertation, including summaries in English and Dutch, is available here. Print copies are available on request.