Tax Cooperation in an Unjust World

A demonstration of the role that tax systems play in achieving international justice; this book establishes that current international tax systems facilitate wealthy states claiming an unfair share of the global economy, shows how this system feeds off human suffering, and explains how to achieve justice using existing international structures.

The way that nation states design their tax systems impacts the sharing of resources and wealth within and across societies. To date, wealthy countries have made tax policy design and coordination choices which allow them to claim more than they are justifiably entitled to from the global economy. In Tax Cooperation in an Unjust World, Allison Christians and Laurens van Apeldoorn show how this presently accepted reality both facilitates and feeds off continued human suffering, and therefore violates conceptions of international distributive justice. They examine two principles that govern tax cooperation across states, and explain how the current international tax order impedes their realization. They then show how states could work toward fulfilling the principles and building a fairer international tax system via incremental yet effective adaptation of key international tax norms and rules.