Tax Competition: Global but Virgin under Rwandan Law Pie Habimana * Abstract This paper’s foundation is the global character of (harmful) tax competition. While this phenomenon’s global existence is widely recognised alongside the global endeavours to fight against it, the situation in Rwanda seems not to be the same. That makes up the main purpose of this paper which aims to show how (harmful) tax competition constitutes a glob‐ al issue, but with little attention under Rwandan law. In that regard, this paper calls the at‐ tention of Rwandan policymakers, academics, and researchers to dive deep in the matters of tax competition for the sake of making Rwanda stand on the safe side. This paper plays a role of a wake-up bell to step in other legal systems’ concerns in the regulation of (harmful) tax competition. Introduction States’ tax competition is one of the hottest topics that attracts the attention of lawyers. And not just for lawyers; it has also become a global topic 1 classically debated in most parts of the world by politicians, economists, policymakers, commentators, academics, etc. 2 Inter‐ national tax competition is also a key part of constantly and hotly discussed international A. * Pie HABIMANA, Ph.D candidate in International Tax Law at Leiden University, Faculty of Law, Tax Law Department. Lecturer at University of Rwanda, School of Law. Senior Partner in Amilex Chambers. This paper is significantly based on the doctoral research that the author is currently en‐ gaged in at Leiden University (The Netherlands). 1 H G Petersen (ed), ‘Tax Systems and Tax Harmonization in the East African Community’ (2010) Report for the GTZ and the General Secretariat of the EAC, p. 24; M P van der Hoek, ‘Tax Harmo‐ nization and Competition in the European Union’ (2003) eJournal of Tax Research 1(1), 19. 2 L V Faulhaber, ‘The Trouble with Tax Competition: From Practice to Theory’ (2018) Tax L.Rev. 71(311), p. 311; F Wishlade, ‘When Policy Worlds Collide: Tax Competition, State Aid, and Re‐ gional Economic Development in the EU’ (2012) Journal of European Integration 34(6), p. 586; L Cerioni, ‘Harmful Tax Competition Revisited: Why not a Purely Legal Perspective under EC Law?’ (2005) Euro.Tax., p. 267; S Drezgić, ‘Harmful Tax Competition in the EU with Reference to Croat‐ ia’ (2005) Journal of Economics and Business 23(1), p. 72; M P Devereux and S Loretz, ‘What do we Know about Corporate Tax Competition?’ (2013) Nat’l Tax J. 66(3), p. 745. 41 https://doi.org/10.5771/2363-6270-2020-1-41, am 03.12.2021, 14:21:17 Open Access - - http://www.nomos-elibrary.de/agb