Current debates about taxes are dominated by references to foreign models. The contributors to this book explore how ideas about taxation were transferred between and within countries from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. They send out a word of caution to current policymakers looking for straightforward solutions from abroad.

W. ELLIOT BROWNLEE Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA MARTIN DAUNTON Professor of Economic History, University of Cambridge, UK ALEXANDER GRAB Professor of History, University of Maine-Orono, USA CHRISTINE LEBEAU Professor of History, University of Paris - Panthéon Sorbonne, France FRANCES M.B. LYNCH Reader in French Studies, University of Westminster, London, UK MIRANDA STEWART Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne Law School, Australia JOSEPH J. THORNDIKE Tax Historian; Analyst, Tax Analysts, Washington, D.C., USA ANDREAS THIER Professor of Law and Legal History, University of Zurich, Switzerland.

PART I: INTRODUCTION Global Debates about Taxation: Transfers of Ideas, the Challenge of Political Legitimacy and the Paradoxes of State-Building; H.Nehring& F.Schui PART II: CHALLENGES OF WAR AND OCCUPATION Regional Exchanges and Patterns of Taxation in Eighteenth Century Europe: The Case of the Italian Cadastres; C.Lebeau Learning from French Experience? The Prussian Régie Tax Administration, 1766-86; F.Schui The Napoleonic Empire in Italy: The Transfer of Tax Ideas and Political Legitimacy (1802-1814); A.Grab PART III: FEDERAL POLITIES The Transfer of Ideas about Taxation in a Federal State: The Example of the German Empire 1875-1914; A.Thier The Paradoxes of State-Building: Transnational Expertise and the Income Tax Debates in the United States and Germany, c .1880-1914; H.Nehring Harmonization through Competition? The Evolution of Taxation in Postwar Europe; F.M.B.Lynch PART IV: EMPIRES AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS Tax Transfers: Britain and its Empire, 1848, 1914; M.Daunton The Transfer of Tax Ideas during the 'Reverse Course' on the US Occupation of Japan; W.E.Brownlee Tax Policy Transfer to Developing Countries: Politics, Institutions and Experts; M.Stewart The Flat Tax: Fiscal Revolution or Policy Diffusion?; J.J.Thorndike