Introduction: Tax coordination in the European Union

The seven papers in this issue grew out of a conference on Tax Policy in the European Union organized by the Research Centre for Economic Policy (OCFEB) of Erasmus University Rotterdam and held at the Dutch Ministry of Finance in The Hague. The first paper reviews the issues and options that the EU Member States face in coordinating their tax systems. The following three papers examine tax competition issues, the effects of corporation taxes on foreign direct investment, and two proposals for common base taxation contained in the European Commission's report on Company Taxation in the Internal Market, published at the time of the conference. Then there is paper focusing on the implications of aging populations for old-age support-a problem that is more acute in most EU Member States than elsewhere. The two remaining papers deal with the most appropriate value-added tax (VAT) regime for handling goods entering intra-EU trade and the application of the VAT to electronic commerce in the EU.