preferred way for governments with a weak administrative capacity to collect revenue. Moreover, because capital is more mobile than labour and households, it is tempting to reduce the levels of taxation of capital, particularly by lowering the corporate tax and the person income tax for the highest income earners,24 and to compensate this by increasing the taxation of wage-earners and households. It has been demonstrated time and again that the levels of taxes paid by corporations plays only a minor role in the decisions of investors concerning the location of their investment.25 Yet, the myth persists that attracting investors by lowering the corporate tax base is a sustainable strategy, as if the comparative advantage of countries could consist in maintaining them unable to educate a highly qualified workforce, to maintain well-functioning public services, and to improve the quality of life for those working under their jurisdiction. Fiscal competition persists. It is stimulated by indicators such as the Doing Business ranking of the World Bank, which -- contrary to findings of organisations such as the OECD or IMF -still suggests that the lowering of corporate taxes is a valid means to attract investment, since countries that reduce tax rates, or raise the threshold for taxable income, or provide for a larger set of exemptions, get approval. Thus for instance, Paying Taxes 2017: The Global Picture, a background study to the Doing Business ranking jointly authored by the World Bank and by PwC, concludes following a review of 190 countries' tax regimes that the Total Tax Rate (the cost of all taxes borne, as a % of commercial profit) decreased by 0.1 % in 2015, to reach 40.6 % -- a result of 38 jurisdictions decreasing taxes, while 44 raised taxes (but doing so to a lesser extent).26 The World Bank's commentary included in the study acknowledges that "Taxes are important to the proper functioning of an economy. They are the main source of federal, state and local government revenues used to fund health care, education, public transport, unemployment benefits and pensions, among others".27 Yet, the ranking at least implicitly sends the exact opposite message, as the better ranked countries are those where the costs of doing business go down: among the eleven factors according to which countries are ranked in the most recent edition (the fourteenth of its kind) Doing Business report are "payments, time and total tax rate for a firm to comply with all tax regulations as well as post-filing processes".28 Moreover, the report suggests that the shift from direct taxes (such as those, in particular, on corporate incomes) to indirect taxes are a rather positive trend: "Consumption taxes, primarily in the form of value-added tax, goods and services tax (GST) as well as sales and use tax (SUT), have grown to be a major source of tax revenues for governments across the globe as they begin to appreciate that taxing consumption provides a more certain tax revenue stream income), this regressivity either disappears or is significantly attenuated when calculated on the basis of consumption (that is, the higher levels of consumption of the rich and the high VAT rates on luxury items that are only affordable to the rich, leads to a situation in which the rich contribute more to the revenues collected through VAT than the poor). See Corbacho et al., More than Revenue: Taxation as a development tool, cited above (note 9), at 167-168. 24 International Monetary Fund Policy Paper, Fiscal Policy and Income Inequality, Jan. 2014, p. 37 (estimating that top personal income taxes were lowered by about 30 % on average since 1980). 25 See the references cited above, note 11. 26 World Bank and PwC, Paying Taxes 2017: The Global Picture (World Bank Group, Washington, D.C., 2017). Rather awkwardly, this total is obtained by including in the calculation of the total tax rate "the sum of all the different taxes and contributions payable after accounting for allowable deductions and exemptions, which fall five categories: "profit or corporate income tax, social contributions and labour taxes paid by the employer (in respect of which all mandatory contributions are included, even if paid to a private entity such as a requited pension fund), property taxes, turnover taxes and other taxes (such as municipal fees and vehicle and fuel taxes)" (id., 91 (in Appendix 1 concerning the methodology). This deviates from standard practice, for instance, from the recommendation so the IMF's Government Financial Statistics Manual, which treat levies for the collection of waste or environmental of contributions to employees' health or pension funds as distinct from general taxes: the methodology followed results in a misleadingly high estimate of the tax burden, which increases the pressure on governments to reduce the costs for businesses in all the areas covered. See Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury, World Bank Must Stop Encouraging Harmful Tax Competition, IPS (Inter Press Service) News Agency, April 2017, available at: http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/04/world-bank-must-stop-encouraging-harmful-tax-competition/ (last accessed on 30 April 2017). 27 World Bank and PwC, Paying Taxes 2017: The Global Picture, cited above, at 20. 28 World Bank, Doing Business 2017. Equal Opportunity for All (World Bank Group, Washington, D.C., 2017), at 14 (table 2.1.). 11 CRIDHO Working Paper 2017/1