From the "revenue rule" to transnational administration in tax law

The essay analyses the evolution of the concept of mutual recognition in tax matters. Starting from the less recent manifestations of State sovereignty, on the basis of which the only relevant fiscal law in one State is its own and no recognition of foreign acts could be made, we come to more recent times in which – after the overcoming of that approach - the final landing place remains unclear. Apart from those exceptional cases in which a State unilaterally recognizes an act coming from the tax administration of another State, it seems that from the initial non-recognition, the national tax systems has jumped to much more sophisticated forms of transnational administrative procedure. According to such recent development, the act is the result of the contribution of several national authorities (sometimes also supported by supranational bodies) and, as such, it is a genuinely transnational act or -at least- an internal act that represents however the final outcome of a genuine transnational procedure. This evolution can be understood in the perspective of the aim of States to defend their sovereignty in fiscal matters as far as possible. It is clear that the tax sovereignty is more compressed where the matter concerns the recognition of a foreign administrative act. On the contrary, fewer problems arise when the tax administration of a State contributes since the beginning, together with other administrations, to the formation of an act that - albeit originated in one State and destined to produce effects in another - is shaped by the simultaneous participation of the various institutional actors involved. One can speak, therefore, about a new notion of tax sovereignty, under which the protection of the peculiarities of a single legal system is realized no more through the opposition and the non recognition, but with a ex ante procedural cooperation. A strong influence in this sense comes from the European Union, where we can find several examples of transnational procedures aimed at guaranteeing the circulation of fiscal administrative acts and decisions among the Member States. In the common space, the reference to the «foreign» act subject to recognition becomes somehow obsolete.