This book addresses sixteen different reform proposals that are urgently needed to correct the fault lines in the international tax system as it exists today, and which deprive both developing and developed countries of critical tax resources. It offers clear and concrete ideas on how the reforms can be achieved and why they are important for a more just and equitable global system to prevail. The key to reducing the tax gap and consequent human rights deficit in poor countries is global financial transparency. Such transparency is essential to curbing illicit financial flows that drain less developed countries of capital and tax revenues, and are an impediment to sustainable development. A major break-through for financial transparency is now within reach. The policy reforms outlined in this book not only advance tax justice but also protect human rights by curtailing illegal activity and making available more resources for development. While the reforms are realistic they require both political and an informed and engaged civil society that can put pressure on governments and policy makers to act.

This short introduction to issues of tax justice explains the meaning and causes of tax injustice and offers options for a better future. Providing insight into the specific failures of Africa s tax systemand the associated problems of capital flight, tax evasion, tax avoidance, and tax competitionthis book explores the role of governments, parliaments, and taxpayers, and asks how stakeholders can help achieve tax justice. Arguing that tax revenues are essential for establishing independent states of free citizens, it demonstrates how the tax consensus promoted by multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, has influenced tax policy in Africa and led to a reduction in government revenues in many countries. "

This in-depth coverage recognizes that tax law does not exist in isolation and reveals how tax law frequently overlaps with competition law, administrative law, environmental law, and constitutional law, and how principles from these areas of practice can affect the adjudication of tax cases. Proportionality and Fair Taxation is an important guide for all involved in tax law. Tax lawyers will find valuable insights that will help with both litigation and counselling whilst practitioners, academics, and policymakers will appreciate how the book reveals the extent to which an informed awareness of proportionality coupled with reasonableness is essential for the fair, consistent, and effective application of tax rules or measures. Order Proportionality and Fair Taxation by Joao Dacio Rolim for an in-depth discussion and practical guidance on the fundamental role of proportionality in tax matters

Explains why perfecting, rather than curbing, interstate competition would make international taxation both more efficient and more just.

This is the first book to give a collective treatment of philosophical issues relating to tax. The tax system is central to the operation of states and to the ways in which states interact with individual citizens. Taxes are used by states to fund the provision of public goods and public services, to engage in direct or indirect forms of redistribution, and to mould the behaviour of individual citizens. As the contributors to this volume show, there are a number of pressing and thorny philosophical issues relating to the tax system, and these issues often connect in fascinating ways with foundational questions regarding property rights, public justification, democracy, state neutrality, stability, political psychology, and other moral and political issues. Many of these deep and fascinating philosophical questions about tax have not received as much sustained attention as they clearly merit. The aim of advancing the debate about tax in political philosophy has both general and more specific aspects, ranging across both over-arching issues regarding the tax system as a whole and more specific issues relating to particular forms of tax policy. Thinking clearly about tax is not an easy task, as much that is of central importance is missed if one proceeds at too great a level of abstraction, and issues of conceptual and normative importance often only come sharply into focus when viewed against real-world questions of implementation and feasibility. Serious philosophical work on the tax system will often therefore need to be interdisciplinary, and so the discussion in this book includes a number of scholars whose expertise spans across neighbouring disciplines to philosophy, including political science, economics, public policy, and law.

Over the past few decades, the concentration of wealth and property in the hands of a few has been facilitated by tax evasion, tax avoidance, and above all by tax competition. Fortunately, a determined move toward international cooperation among tax authorities is gathering its forces to do battle. This invaluable book shows how the globalization of trade, the digitization of the economy, tax competition between sovereign states, the erosion of the tax base, and the transfer of pro ts have all revealed the weaknesses of a traditional tax system that has reached its limits, and how numerous states and groups of states have joined efforts in creating a new international tax system designed to restore fairness and stability in the levying of taxes worldwide. Stemming from a 2016 conference initiated by the Canadian non-pro t organization TaxCOOP, convened by the World Bank and bringing together well-known taxation experts from prominent international organizations, the book presents outstanding contributions highlighting the impacts of tax competition and viable solutions. Among the issues and topics covered are the following: – electronic commerce and electronic money; – transfer pricing; – derivatives and hedge funds; – protecting tax whistle-blowers; – offshore tax investigations; – possibility of an international tax court; – impact of tax competition on developing countries; – carbon pricing; – tobacco taxation; and – effective taxation of the ultra-wealthy and their nancial capital. The chapters include details of country experiences and results, in some cases analyzed by key protagonists themselves. Collectively, the contributions take a giant step toward reinforcing the power of sovereign states in sectors such as the environment, education, and health. As an authoritative guide to increasing the level of transparency and accountability of private and public economic actors and restoring citizens’ trust in the fairness of our global governance systems, this peerless volume will be warmly welcomed by tax lawyers, taxation authorities, and interested academics worldwide.

Much of the discussion of tax fairness today focuses on distribution - who gets what. But this is too limited a focus. To the average person, tax fairness means something else: primarily receiving benefits commensurate with the taxes one pays, being treated with basic respect by the law and the tax authorities, and respecting legitimate efforts to earn income. The average person is not totally indifferent to inequality, but concerns for redistribution are moderated by the extent to which income and wealth have been perceived to be earned through honest effort. This book demonstrates how an understanding of "folk justice" can deepen our understanding of how tax systems actually work and how they might potentially be reformed.

A groundbreaking history of why governments do—and don't—tax the rich In today's social climate of acknowledged and growing inequality, why are there not greater efforts to tax the rich? In this wide-ranging and provocative book, Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage ask when and why countries tax their wealthiest citizens—and their answers may surprise you. Taxing the Rich draws on unparalleled evidence from twenty countries over the last two centuries to provide the broadest and most in-depth history of progressive taxation available. Scheve and Stasavage explore the intellectual and political debates surrounding the taxation of the wealthy while also providing the most detailed examination to date of when taxes have been levied against the rich and when they haven't. Fairness in debates about taxing the rich has depended on different views of what it means to treat people as equals and whether taxing the rich advances or undermines this norm. Scheve and Stasavage argue that governments don't tax the rich just because inequality is high or rising—they do it when people believe that such taxes compensate for the state unfairly privileging the wealthy. Progressive taxation saw its heyday in the twentieth century, when compensatory arguments for taxing the rich focused on unequal sacrifice in mass warfare. Today, as technology gives rise to wars of more limited mobilization, such arguments are no longer persuasive. Taxing the Rich shows how the future of tax reform will depend on whether political and economic conditions allow for new compensatory arguments to be made.

The way that nation states design their tax systems impacts the sharing of resources and wealth within and across societies. To date, wealthy countries have made tax policy design and coordination choices which allow them to claim more than they are justifiably entitled to from the global economy. In Tax Cooperation in an Unjust World, Allison Christians and Laurens van Apeldoorn show how this presently accepted reality both facilitates and feeds off continued human suffering, and therefore violates conceptions of international distributive justice. They examine two principles that govern tax cooperation across states, and explain how the current international tax order impedes their realization. They then show how states could work toward fulfilling the principles and building a fairer international tax system via incremental yet effective adaptation of key international tax norms and rules.

This book addresses sixteen different reform proposals that are urgently needed to correct the fault lines in the international tax system as it exists today, and which deprive both developing and developed countries of critical tax resources. It offers clear and concrete ideas on how the reforms can be achieved and why they are important for a more just and equitable global system to prevail. The key to reducing the tax gap and consequent human rights deficit in poor countries is global financial transparency. Such transparency is essential to curbing illicit financial flows that drain less developed countries of capital and tax revenues, and are an impediment to sustainable development. A major break-through for financial transparency is now within reach. The policy reforms outlined in this book not only advance tax justice but also protect human rights by curtailing illegal activity and making available more resources for development. While the reforms are realistic they require both political and an informed and engaged civil society that can put pressure on governments and policy makers to act.