Jeffrey Owens and the new architecture of contemporary “Tax & Good governance” in the 21st century and beyond
Keywords:
Jeffrey Owens, Global Tax Governance, OECD, Governance, tax transparency, Tax Policy and AdministrationAbstract
This article offers a scholarly assessment of Professor Jeffrey Owens' intellectual and institutional contributions to contemporary tax law and tax governance, written on the occasion of his retirement from formal academic leadership and as director of the Vienna Center for Global Tax Policy. Rather than treating Owens simply as a prolific author or a senior civil servant, the article argues that his significance lies in the unusual combination of roles he has embodied for more than five decades: economist, senior international civil servant, architect of taxation and good governance, tax compliance and public intellectual on tax transparency, theorist of tax dispute prevention, and advocate of a model to combat international tax fraud and cross-border money laundering through enhanced international tax cooperation within a more inclusive and comprehensive framework.
The article reconstructs the main phases of his trajectory, from his early OECD work on comparative tax systems and fiscal reform, through his leadership of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, to his post-OECD period at the WU Global Tax Policy Center and his collaborations with other internationals organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, with other regional organizations: EU, CIAT, ATAF, etc. and with the tax administrations of the States around the world.
It is argued that Owens’s oeuvre should be read as a continuous attempt to reconcile efficiency, administrability, transparency, legitimacy, and international coordination under changing conditions of globalization. Particular attention is paid to his collaboration with Eva Andrés-Aucejo and other authors in the Review of International and European Economic Law (RIEEL), especially the project on a general agreement on international tax cooperation, trade and global tax governance and the latter works on a global tax legal order from a holistic perspective. These writings are examined not as peripheral essays, but as a late-career culmination of themes that had been developing throughout Owens’s earlier work: multilateralism, administrative cooperation, dispute prevention, tax compliance, institutional design, good government and the modernization of tax governance. In that sense, Owens’s later scholarship moves beyond technocratic coordination and toward a broader constitutional imagination for international economy and tax law. The article concludes that Jeffrey Owens’s legacy lies not only in the technical refinement of international tax policy, but also in expanding the horizon of what global tax governance can aspire to become.
Author Biographies
Marco Nicoli, World Bank
Legal Vice Presidency of the World Bank: former Senior Project Manager Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development Senior Knowledge Management Officer from the World Bank. Special officer of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Ana María Enríquez Rodríguez, University of Barcelona
PhD Candidate in Law at the University of Barcelona (UB). Researcher in Tax Law, with a focus on tax compliance, fiscal education and international taxation. Member of the editorial board of the Revista de Educación y Derecho (Q2) and co-coordinator of an international conference on Higher Education and Artificial Intelligence.
Patricio Masbernat, Universidad Santo Tomás
Professor of Law. School of Law, Universidad Santo Tomás, Chile. Professor of Tax Law at Universidad Autónoma de Chile, School of Law. Lecturer at Faculdade Brasileira de Tributação, Brasil. Lawyer, LLM. Corporate Lawyer & Legal Consultant
Eva Andres-Aucejo, University of Barcelona
Eva ANDRÉS-AUCEJO, full professor of financial and tax law. Director of the Review of International and European Economic Law. Director of the Education and Law Review (SCOPUS-JCR/ESCI, WoS, Q-2). Extraordinary Award Ph.D. and Bachelor's Degree in Law. Bachelor's Economics and Business Sciences. Expert in International tax cooperation and global governance. Policy making. Researcher and consultant of the Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development of the World Bank (HCBM). Accredited observer of the UN Tax Committee (2019-2024). Accredited observer at the second session of the United Nations AD-HOC TAX COMMITTEE to draft terms of reference for a UN framework convention on international tax cooperation (20 July-16 August 2024). Accredited in the next 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), 30 June - 3 July 2025 Seville, Spain.
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