The hidden wealth of nations : the scourge of tax havens
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The hidden wealth of nations : the scourge of tax havens
University of Chicago Press, 2015
- Other Title
-
La richesse cachée des nations : enquête sur les paradis fiscaux
Available at 14 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
"Originally published as La richesse cachée des nations : enquête sur les paradis fiscaux"--T.p. verso
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
We are well aware of the rise and dominance of the one percent as the rapid growth of economic inequality has seen the majority of the world's wealth held in the pockets of fewer and fewer. One much-discussed solution to this imbalance is to significantly increase the rate at which we are taxing the wealthy. However, an enormous amount of the world's wealth is hidden in tax havens, in countries like Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the Cayman Islands, so it can't be fully accounted for and taxed fairly. To complicate it further, no one, from economists to bankers to politicians, has been able to quantify exactly how much of the world's assets are currently being hidden-until now. Gabriel Zucman is the first economist to offer reliable insight into the actual extent of the world's money held in tax havens. And it's staggering. In The Hidden Wealth of Nations, Zucman offers an inventive and rigorous approach to quantifying how big the problem is, how tax havens work and are organized, and how we can begin to approach a solution. His research reveals that tax havens are a quickly growing danger to the world economy.
In the past five years, the amount of wealth in tax havens has increased over twenty-five percent-there has never been as much money held offshore as there is today. This hidden wealth accounts for a least eight percent of the global financial assets, equivalent to $7.6 trillion. Fighting the notion that any attempts to solve the tax haven problem are futile, since some countries will always offer more advantageous tax rates than others, as well the counter-argument that after the financial crisis many countries have successfully fought tax evasion, Zucman shows how both sides are actually very wrong. In The Hidden Wealth of Nations he offers an ambitious agenda for reform, focused on ways in which countries can change the incentives of tax havens. Only by first understanding the extent of the wealth being secretly held can we begin to estimate the kind of actions that would force tax havens to give up their practices.
Zucman's work has quickly become the gold standard for quantifying the amount of the world's assets held in havens, and in this concise book, he lays out in approachable language how the international banking system works and the dangerous extent to which the large-scale evasion of taxes is undermining the global market as a whole. The Hidden Wealth of Nations is essential reading if we are to find a way to solve the problem of increasing inequality.
by "Nielsen BookData"