Present at the Creation: Archival Research and Evidence on the Origins of the Single Tax Principle

This is the first of a series of articles on the origins of the so-called “single tax principle,” whose normative value has been denied or at least undermined by some tax legal scholars. It is based on archival research conducted at Harvard Law School Library - Historical & Special Collections on the unpublished Stanley S. Surrey’s papers and on unpublished minutes of meetings of the League of Nations available at the United Nations Archives in Geneva. The purpose is to contextualize and provide an historical background for the single tax principle by guiding the readers through these unpublished materials. It aims at identifying who theorized (Clavier) and practically implemented (Thomas Adams) the single tax principle at the international level as well as at domestic level (published and unpublished materials show that Adams and Surrey were the two main architects of both US international tax rules and the international tax regime). The author shows how the single tax principle originated in 1927 when Clavier theorized that, ‘international incomes be prevented from escaping taxation altogether is as desirable as that the same income shall not be taxed by several different countries;’ but only reached its maturity during the nine years 1957 – 1966 when Surrey, firstly, was successful in persuading Senate not to ratify Art. XV(I) of the Pakistan - US Income Tax Treaty (1957); secondly, adopted the Subpart F regime; thirdly, introduced the Investment or Holding Company article in the treaty with Luxembourg; and, finally, closed the loophole in the US-Canadian tax treaty. Claiming that the single tax principle does not have any normative value at all simply clashes with the above statutory provisions whose original intent was to suppress anomalies such as double exemptions as well as with what Martin Norr wrote in his 1964 Tax Law Review article, ‘the presumption that international income should pay tax at least once is becoming part of the common law of the Western industrial community, our new law merchant. If international income does not bear tax in some country, the burden will increasingly be on its recipients to justify the deviation from the norm.’

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