Economic Resources
Taxation
Articles, Op-Eds, Essays
Safe Havens, Quinn Slobodian.
“The UK’s “second empire” of tax-free jurisdictions around the world persists despite the overwhelming evidence that it enables corruption, drains public budgets, and exacerbates inequality.
…The schemes are both highly complex and breathtakingly simple: money that would otherwise be taxed by the state is hidden abroad... Those who have something to gain are organized as an ultrawealthy elite class, while those who stand to lose are dispersed and lack resources... They won the backing of Milton Friedman and James Buchanan—and, more importantly, the Congressional Black Caucus, which mobilized against the prospect of economic measures leveled against small (Black) developing nations.
Nowadays it is hard to suggest any international regulation without being accused of infringing on the sovereignty of the havens....
One of the outcomes was a global tax deal.... The deal will also implement a global minimum corporate tax.... The EU has pressed on anyway, securing a directive in late 2022.... Meanwhile, left out of the “rich countries’ club” of the OECD, African nations have led a parallel international effort to regulate taxation and prevent companies and individuals from gaming the system.... Supporters hope that the resolution will also create a global body for negotiating and setting tax rates—a missing element of international governance so far.... What Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez call ‘fiscal democracy.’”
Silver Spoon Oligarchs: How America's 50 Largest Inherited-Wealth Dynasties Accelerate Inequality, Institute for Policy Studies.
“…some of these wealth holders — or their descendants — shift resources to consolidate their wealth, fend off competition, and create monopolies. As this report will show, they focus less on creating new wealth and more on preserving existing systems that extract ongoing rents from consumers and the real economy.
America’s dynastic families, both old and new, are deploying a range of wealth preservation strategies to further concentrate wealth and power — power that is deployed to influence democratic institutions, depress civic imagination, and rig the rules to further entrench inequality. This tax avoidance means less support for the infrastructure we all rely on to preserve our health, safety, and quality of life... dynastically wealthy families use their financial, political, and philanthropic clout to advance their dynasty-building agenda.” [read more]
How Accounting Giants Craft Favorable Tax Rules From Inside Government, Jesse Drucker, Danny Hakim.
“The largest U.S. accounting firms have perfected a remarkably effective behind-the-scenes system to promote their interests in Washington. Their tax lawyers take senior jobs at the Treasury Department, where they write policies that are frequently favorable to their former corporate clients, often with the expectation that they will soon return to their old employers. The firms welcome them back with loftier titles and higher pay, according to public records reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with current and former government and industry officials. From their government posts, many of the industry veterans approved loopholes long exploited by their former firms, gave tax breaks to former clients and rolled back efforts to rein in tax shelters — with enormous impact... Even some former industry veterans said they viewed the rapid back-and-forth arrangements as a big part of the reason that tax policy had become so skewed in favor of the wealthy, at the expense of just about everyone else. (read more)
Tax the Rich and Their Heirs, Lily Batchelder.
“How to tax inheritances more fairly.”
How to Tax Our Way Back to Justice, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman.
The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You, David Leonhardt.
Private inequity: How a powerful industry conquered the American tax system, Jesse Drucker, Danny Hakim.
“There were two weeks left in the Trump administration when the Treasury Department handed down a set of rules governing an obscure corner of the tax code.
Overseen by a senior Treasury official whose previous job involved helping the wealthy avoid taxes, the new regulations represented a major victory for private equity firms. They ensured that executives in the $4.5 trillion industry, whose leaders often measure their yearly pay in eight or nine figures, could avoid paying hundreds of millions in taxes…” [read more]
Books
The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay (2019), Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman.
“Even as they have become fabulously wealthy, the ultra-rich have seen their taxes collapse to levels last seen in the 1920s. Meanwhile, working-class Americans have been asked to pay more. The Triumph of Injustice presents a forensic investigation into this dramatic transformation, written by two economists who have revolutionized the study of inequality.”