Evolution of fiscal systems: Convergence or divergence?

The purpose of this article is to analyze, more than ten years after the financial crisis of 2007, the convergence or divergence of the diversity of capitalism, focusing on the fiscal systems. Studying 29 countries, we first analyse the evolution of the taxation of households, firms, labour, consumption and capital. Then we use recent statistical method to indentify three types of fiscal systems: liberal, intermediate, and social-democratic, which can be ranked in ascending order of tax rates, confirming known typologies in the diversity of capitalism literature. The first result of this analysis is that only the tax rate on corporate profits shows signs of downward convergence over the period. The other tax rates, on labour or capital tax on households, show rather signs of divergence. Second, we show the divergence of the liberal and social-democratic group over the period. The European countries are converging towards the social-democratic model, with the exception of Great Britain, which is moving towards the liberal model over the period. Hence, the analysis shows that the divergence of fiscal systems is compatible with the convergence of certain taxes on the most mobile factors during a strong period of trade internationalization. Thus, the financial crisis does not seem to contribute to the convergence, but to the divergence of fiscal systems.