What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Tax Justice?
- Alex Cobham - Tax Justice Network
Crucially, it also explores what we can do about it. What are the practical realities of challenging the threats of tax injustice and of holding abusers accountable? What are the policies and institutional shifts we need to see and fight for?
It is estimated that cross-border tax abuse accounts for around half a trillion dollars of lost revenue around the world each year. This is important. Alex Cobham shows us that tax is more than just business regulation or economic policy. It is a powerful tool for creating a fair and just society. It is our social superpower.
Alex Cobham is an economist and chief executive of Tax Justice Network.
The ‘What Do We Know and What Should We Do About...?' series offers readers short, up-to-date overviews of key issues often misrepresented, simplified or misunderstood in modern society and the media. Each book is written by a leading social scientist with an established reputation in the relevant subject area.
"Short, sharp and compelling." - Alex Preston, The Observer
"If you want to learn a lot about what matters most, in as short a time as possible, this is the series for you." - Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford
Overall this book covers a good deal of ground, summarising the authors work, in both the academic field as well as in practice and in understanding the relationship between firms and governments. It also for example highlights the unequal nature of the bargaining arrangements between firms and tax authorities, and the need, for reasons discussed above to end secrecy, not only at the level of the firm, but from banks, and also (typically big 4) auditors and the advice they give on tax avoidance.
Overall therefore, Cobham provides an excellent, thought provoking overview of these issues, with many examples that even the casual reader would find interesting.
