I’ve worked for two decades as a researcher and campaigner to expose the tax behaviour of unscrupulous multinational companies and wealthy individuals, and the central lesson is that we only make progress when the narrative shifts: when the public and policymakers start to appreciate just how much damage is done to our societies by the professional enablers of tax abuse. These books are real narrative-shifters, showing the world to us in ways we need to see, and making it a pleasure.
I wrote
What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Tax Justice?
I think Treasure Islands may well be the most influential book in tax justice.
Author Nick Shaxson, previously a journalist for the Financial Times and Reuters, became a key member of the Tax Justice Network and wrote this rollicking blockbuster. In a story that spans the globe, Shaxson captures the lurking malevolence of the men – and it is almost always men – who shaped our world so they could profit from selling opportunities for tax abuse and financial crime.
Eva Joly is one of the great heroes of tax justice, one of my heroes, a campaigning judge who faced down death threats in order to break the extraordinary corruption case of France’s biggest oil company.
But here, she joins forces with the novelist Judith Perrignon to tell a story of corruption that is sharp, ironic, and intelligent, as it runs from Lagos to London, by way of Paris and St Petersburg.
The head of the Nigerian fraud squad is evacuated from Lagos by secret-service operatives. Meanwhile a junior prosecutor in Nice probes the mysterious death of the wife of a powerful banker and a crusading journalist in St Petersburg pursues a corrupt oligarch and his criminal business empire. The paths of all three cross in London, where they find themselves embroiled in violent events obviously linked to financial and political interests and hunted by the oligarch's men, the Western secret services and goons sent by Nigerian oil magnates. A satirical, intelligent and fast-paced thriller set in the world of high finance…
Social Security for Future Generations
by
John A. Turner,
This book provides new options for reform of the Social Security (OASI) program. Some options are inspired by the U.S. pension system, while others are inspired by the literature on financial literacy or the social security systems in other countries.
An example of our proposals inspired by the U.S. pension…
To understand just how, and why, the richest people in the world go to so much trouble to ensure that they don’t have to live by the same tax rules as the rest of us, sociologist Brooke Harrington literally trained as a wealth manager.
In this extraordinary book based on interviews in financial centres all around the world, Harrington details the tools of the trade, and at the same time shares rare insights into the people who wield them, and those who pay them to do so.
"A timely account of how the 1% holds on to their wealth...Ought to keep wealth managers awake at night." -Wall Street Journal
"Harrington advises governments seeking to address inequality to focus not only on the rich but also on the professionals who help them game the system." -Richard Cooper, Foreign Affairs
"An insight unlike any other into how wealth management works." -Felix Martin, New Statesman
"One of those rare books where you just have to stand back in awe and wonder at the author's achievement...Harrington offers profound insights into the world of the professional people who dedicate their lives to…
How did the UK and its network of dependent territories emerge as the greatest global threat, in terms of tax abuse and financial secrecy? And just how much damage has this done to the country itself, never mind all those it has helped to cheat elsewhere?
If you’re interested in these questions, I can’t recommend any book more highly than that of investigative journalist Oliver Bullough. His answers are damning, and sharply comic. “We are now a nation of Jeeveses, snobbish enablers for rich halfwits of considerably less charm than Bertie Wooster. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Named one of the Best Books of 2022 by the New Yorker and the Economist
In his forceful follow-up to Moneyland, Oliver Bullough unravels the dark secret of how Britain placed itself at the center of the global offshore economy and at the service of the worst people in the world.
The Suez Crisis of 1956 was the nadir of Britain's twentieth century, the moment when the once-superpower was bullied into retreat. "Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role," said Dean Acherson, a former US secretary of state. Acheson's line has entered into the canon…
Social Security for Future Generations
by
John A. Turner,
This book provides new options for reform of the Social Security (OASI) program. Some options are inspired by the U.S. pension system, while others are inspired by the literature on financial literacy or the social security systems in other countries.
An example of our proposals inspired by the U.S. pension…
As soon as you start reading, it’s obvious how the economist Thomas Piketty’s book has played a key part in reigniting debate over how and why our societies have allowed such grave inequalities of income and wealth to emerge.
A surprisingly light read, Capital in the Twenty-First Century brings together groundbreaking data on the distribution of financial resources in European and North American countries over more than a century. The central argument is that these inequalities will always arise, if unchecked by state intervention – not least, in the form of wealth taxation.
If you live in a rich country but feel like your society is needlessly poor and divided, I urge you to consider Piketty’s analysis and policy prescriptions.
A New York Times #1 Bestseller An Amazon #1 Bestseller A Wall Street Journal #1 Bestseller A USA Today Bestseller A Sunday Times Bestseller A Guardian Best Book of the 21st Century Winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Winner of the British Academy Medal Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard…
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.
It is estimated that cross-border tax abuse accounts for around half a trillion dollars of lost revenue around the world each year. From profit-shifting by multinational corporations to the exploitation of offshore tax havens, this book sheds light on the people and organisations that enable tax abuse, and the stark social inequalities it creates. 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?
