This chapter outlines the historical development of international
governance of corporate taxation. It analyses whether intergovernmental
cooperation has invigorated or countervailed the adverse consequences of
economic globalisation. In essence, it explores whether international
tax governance has endeavoured to constrain or safeguard states’
capacities to tax. On the one hand, the chapter examines how
international co-operation started with efforts to eliminate double tax
burdens and was motivated by the aspiration of constructing a
transnational market order. On the other, it depicts how later phases of
international tax governance have been sparked by the need to contain
harmful tax competition and international tax avoidance, which have been
experienced as undesired outcomes of untrammelled globalisation. The
chapter concludes that although corporate taxation has increasingly
become an issue of international governance, corporate tax base design
and tax rate setting have substantially remained beyond international
constraints, leaving room for tax competition and tax avoidance.