국제적 이중과세 문제 해결 과정에 대한 게임 이론적 고찰

International tax law reflects the reality of international politics. The current international tax order is the result of each country's strategic interactions. However, in the previous tax law academia, many studies focused on the ‘result’ of interactions, and it doesn't seem that the ‘process’ has been actively discussed. The purpose of this article is to analyze the process of strategic interactions in the international tax issue area through game theory. Countries made a Model Tax Convention in the international organization, and signed a tax treaty to avoid double taxation which distorted the global resource allocation. Accordingly, the source country taxed nonresidents within the tax treaty rates according to the classification of income, and the residence country relived double taxation for its residents through the foreign tax credit or foreign-sourced income exemption. It can be said that each country’s tax policy was adjusted in cooperation with each other to alleviate double taxation of taxpayers’ cross boarder income. Analyzing this with game theory, it is as follows. First, it is a game between capital exporting countries. If the return on foreign investment is significantly higher than that of domestic investment, both countries have incentives to introduce the double taxation relief methods, such as exemption, credit and deduction for foreign taxes. It is called ‘harmony’ in game theory. Although the return on foreign investment is higher than that of domestic investment, it is not very high, and it is rather disadvantageous to the national interest to induce its residents to invest abroad by introducing the exemption or tax credit method. In this case, double taxation cannot be relived without cooperation between the two countries, and so the tax treaty should be signed, which forced the contracting states to provide tax credit for taxes paid in the counterparts or not to tax income that may be taxed in the counterparts. Second, it is a game between capital importing country and capital exporting country. When the rate of return on foreign investment fluctuates, there is a possibility of a strategy change, and if one side does not respond to the other side’s strategy change, a situation may occur in which double taxation is not resolved. A tax treaty method can be a more reliable solution for double taxation problem. Third, the status as a source country or residence country may vary depending on the counterparts. Bilateral treaties, well reflecting the specificity of the counterparts, are more efficient than multilateral treaties. Fourth, when negotiating a tax treaty based on a Model Tax Convention, countries intend to cooperate to prevent double taxation, and it is only a matter of how much the treaty rates will be set at the negotiation table.