ABSTRACT
The chapter of Dries Lesage and Wouter Lips delves into the way the Group of Twenty (G20) has made use of its distinct comparative advantages to provide leadership in the regime complex of tax capacity building for domestic resource mobilization in developing countries. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, the G20 managed to step into the leadership and governance gaps regarding global taxation governance and the growing demand for tax fairness. It also captured the increasing awareness of the taxation–development nexus. Domestic resource mobilization appeared as one of the pillars of the G20’s development program following the 2010 Seoul Development Consensus. One feature added to the pillar was the inclusion of development-relevant spin-offs relating to the general G20/Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) landmark initiatives on exchange of information and the taxation of multinational companies. The G20 leadership also exercised an ‘orchestration’ function: by encouraging the OECD, Bretton Woods institutions, and the United Nations to work together on mapping exercises of the issue area and by encouraging capacity building activities to address tax-base erosion and profit shifting by multinational companies in developing countries. This G20’s leadership here added to the marginalization of the UN as the universal forum and reproduces input legitimacy issues in global governance.
