International taxation | US Taxation Abroad

Income taxation and international mobility http://t.co/8duAV72aGM

— US Taxation Abroad (@TaxationAbroad) January 7, 2014

I was alerted to the book International Taxation and International Mobility from a comment at at another blog. The very insightful comment reads:

Here is an interesting book, partly available online (Note you can actually read the book online):
Income Taxation and International Mobility

It explains why the UK adopted RBT when it created the income tax, which led the rest of the world to copy the same standard, and why the US adopted CBT. It also explains in detail the case of the Philippines, which initially adopted CBT because it inherited the US tax code, but later reduced it considerably as it started noticing various problems. Note that the book was written in 1989, and the Philippines eventually abolished CBT in 1997.

It seems that the countries that have of had CBT fall into two groups:
1. Influence from the US tax code: US itself (still uses CBT), Mexico (abolished later), Philippines (abolished later)
2. Dictatorships: Soviet Union (communist, CBT ended with the country), Bulgaria (communist, abolished CBT after democratization), Vietnam (communist, abolished CBT after opening the economy), Myanmar (military dictatorship, abolished CBT after democratization), Eritrea (still uses CBT, and still a dictatorship)

I wouldn’t be surprised if Eritrea ends up abolishing CBT before the US.