Commercial banks UBS and HSBC embroiled in scandals that in some cases exposed lawmakers themselves as tax evaders… multinationals Google and Apple using the Double Irish and other tax avoidance strategies… governments granting fiscal sweetheart deals behind closed doors (as in Luxembourg)... the stream of news items documenting the crisis of global tax governance is not about to dry up.
Much work has been done in individual disciplines on the phenomenon of tax competition that lies at the heart of this crisis. Yet, the combination of issues of democratic legitimacy, social justice, economic efficiency, and national sovereignty that tax competition raises clearly requires an interdisciplinary analysis.
This book offers a rare example of this kind of work, bringing together experts from political science, philosophy, law, and economics whose contributions combine empirical analysis with normative and institutional proposals. It makes an important contribution to reforming international taxation.
Tax specialists may think they have little to learn from a book on global tax governance, especially one that concludes that the best solution is to create a new International Tax Organisation (ITO). They would be wrong. Anyone concerned with international taxation will benefit from this excellent collection of essays about the nature and possible resolutions of the conflicts within and between states about fiscal sovereignty, tax competition, and domestic and international equity that underlie the international tax discussion. The authors do not always agree with each other and few readers are likely to agree with all of them. But this book makes clear what is really at issue in this discussion and shows why even the recent prodigious efforts of the OECD-G20 BEPS group are most unlikely to produce any lasting solutions. For nation-states and economic globalisation to coexist, something like an ITO may indeed prove necessary. -- Richard Bird, University of Toronto
Peter Dietsch is Associate Professor at the Université de Montréal. His research interests lie at the intersection of political philosophy and economics, with a particular focus on questions of income distribution as well as on the normative dimensions of economic policies. His book Catching Capital – The Ethics of Tax Competition was published with Oxford University Press in 2015.
Thomas Rixen is Professor of Political Science at the University of Bamberg. His research interests are in international and comparative political economy. He is the author of The Political Economy of International Tax Governance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and has published in European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Political Economy and Journal of Common Market Studies, among other journals.
Reuven S Avi-Yonah is the Irwin I. Cohn Professor of Law and director of the International Tax LLM Program. He specializes in corporate and international taxation and has served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the OECD on tax competition. He has published more than 150 books and articles, including the forthcoming Advanced Introduction to International Tax (Elgar, 2015) and Global Perspectives on Income Taxation Law (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Kimberly Clausing is the Thormund Miller and Walter Mintz Professor of Economics at Reed College. Her research studies the taxation of multinational firms, examining how government decisions and firm behavior interplay in the world economy. She has received two Fulbright Research awards, and her research has also been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the International Centre for Tax and Development, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Richard Eccleston is Professor of Political Science and founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of Tasmania. He works on various aspects of comparative politics and economic policy. His specific expertise is in the politics of public finance and taxation reform. His most recent books are The Dynamics of Global Economic Governance (2014) and The Future of Federalism: Multi-level governance in an age of austerity (forthcoming 2015).
Philipp Genschel holds a Joint Chair in European Public Policy at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies and the Political and Social Sciences Department of the European University Institute in Florence. He has published widely on issues of international taxation, global governance and European integration. His latest books include (co-edited with Markus Jachtenfuchs) Beyond the Regulatory Polity? The European Integration of Core State Powers (Oxford University Press, 2014) and (co-edited with Ken Abbott, Duncan Snidal and Bernhard Zangl) International Organizations as Orchestrators (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Itai Grindberg is a professor of tax law at the Georgetown University Law Center. His research focuses on tax reform, international tax, and tax and development. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty, he served in the Office of International Tax Counsel at the United States Department of the Treasury, and as Counsel to the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform of 2005.
Lukas Hakelberg is a doctoral candidate in political science at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His research interest lies in international political economy, where he currently focuses on international cooperation against tax evasion and avoidance. His published work has appeared in Journal of European Public Policy and Global Environmental Politics/i>.
Lyne Latulippe is a professor in the department of taxation at the Faculté d’administration of the University de Sherbrooke. Her main research interests are the design and implementation of domestic and international taxation policy and international tax governance. She is an associate researcher for the Research Chair in Taxation and Public Finance and is responsible for studies on international taxation issues, tax evasion and avoidance and tax fairness.
Markus Meinzer is a senior analyst for the Tax Justice Network (TJN). He is working predominantly on the Financial Secrecy Index and Automatic Information Exchange. He is author of the German language book Steueroase Deutschland. He studied development economics and political science at the Free University of Berlin and at the University of Sussex (UK).
Miriam Ronzoni is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Manchester. She works on various issues of international justice, with special focus on labour, taxation, non-domination, and supranational institutional design. Her work has been published, among others, in Journal of Political Philosophy, Political Studies, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, Review of International Studies.
Laura Seelkopf is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy at the University of Bremen. Her substantive research focus is on comparative tax and social policy, both inside and outside the OECD. Her work has been published in New Political Economy, Politics & Society, and The Oxford Handbook of Transformations of the State.
Helen Smith is a researcher at the University of Tasmania. She holds a 1st Class Honours degree in International Relations for a thesis analysing the influences of geo-strategic factors on US energy policy. She has co-authored various chapters and articles in the areas of taxation and fiscal federalism.
Laurens van Apeldoorn is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Leiden University, the Netherlands. His research interests include early modern political thought and contemporary political theory, and his work has been published in History of European Ideas and Hobbes Studies.
Gabriel Wollner is assistant professor in philosophy at Humboldt University Berlin and leads the research group 'Global challenges in economic and environmental ethics' at the Integrative Research Institute for the Transformation of Human Environment Systems (IRITHESys). His work has been published in Journal of Social Philosophy, Journal of Political Philosophy and Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
Richard Woodward is a senior lecturer at Coventry Business School, UK and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Trends Institute, United Arab Emirates. His research interests include global governance, international organisations, offshore financial centres and small states. His books include The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (Routledge, 2009) and (with Michael Davies) International Organisations: A Companion (Edward Elgar, 2014).
