Tax Justice and Tax Law : Understanding Unfairness in Tax Systems

Most people would agree that tax systems ought to be ‘just’, and perhaps a great deal more just than they are at present.

What is more difficult is to agree on what tax justice is.

This book considers a range of different approaches to, and ideas about the nature of tax justice and covers areas such as:- imbalances in international tax arrangements that deprive developing countries of revenues from natural resources and allow wealthy taxpayers to use tax havens;- protests against governments and large business;- attempts to influence policy through more technical means such as the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profits Shifting project;- interpersonal matters, such as the ways in which tax systems disadvantage women and minorities; - the application of wider philosophical or economic theories to tax systems. The purpose of the book is not to iron out these underlying differences into a grand theory, but rather to gain a more precise understanding of how and why we disagree about tax justice.

In doing so the editors are assisted by a stellar cast of contributors from four continents, with a wide variety of views and experiences but a common interest in this central question of how to agree and disagree about tax justice.

This is, of course, not only an intellectual exercise but also a necessary precursor to achieving real-world change.