Gabriel Zucman is assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Teresa Lavender Fagan is a freelance translator living in Chicago.
"A short and lively investigation into the global effects of tax
avoidance. . . . As Zucman argues, 'Financial secrecy--like
greenhouse gas emissions--has a costly impact on the entire world,
which tax havens choose to ignore."-- "The Week"
"reads like Capital in the Twenty-First Century's lost chapter."--
"Nation"
"A short, pioneering guide to estimating the trillions of dollars
moved to tax havens to evade or avoid paying taxes to the nations
from which this expanding mountain of money was made. Zucman
proposes measures to end the party of these giant tax escapes and
make tax avoiders and evaders pay their fair share."
--Ralph Nader
"It is because Zucman takes the courageous step of moving beyond
academia to being an activist committed to promoting a new and
radical solution that he has unambiguously (even if cautiously)
identified, that I welcome this book. Far too few academics are
willing to take on the role of the public intellectual who steps up
and demands action to address a problem that they have identified.
Zucman deserves full marks for doing so."
-- "Times Higher Education"
"Tax havens are by design secretive and opaque. The entire point of
their existence is to conceal the wealth hidden within them. And a
new book by Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of
Tax Havens, reveals, as never before, the extent of their role in
the global economy. . . . If we are ever to combat inequality
effectively, truly progressive taxation will have to be a part of
the policy mix. But unless we eliminate tax havens now, we are
likely to find that we lack the ability to implement it."--
"Project Syndicate"
"With his book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, Zucman is positioning
himself as this year's Piketty, whose opus renewed a debate about
inequality last year. . . . There has never been as much wealth
sitting in tax havens as there is today, Zucman says, whether it's
Apple Inc. funneling billions in profits through a tiny Irish unit
or a French cabinet minister using secret accounts to cheat on his
taxes. . . . What is to be done? Zucman said there needs to be a
central global register of the owners of the world's wealth,
similar to various registries for real estate holdings. Such a
database doesn't have to be public, but it must be available to
regulators."-- "Bloomberg Business News"
"Zucman is a sometime co-author with Thomas Piketty and his new
book The Hidden Wealth of Nations is set to do for tax havens what
his colleague's did for wealth inequality: define and popularize
the problem."-- "Guardian"
"Zucman seems to have little ambivalence about how to interpret the
data, as his book is subtitled The Scourge of Tax Havens. He
acknowledges that some view tax havens as perfectly legal and
legitimate. But whatever the politics, for anyone who cares about
understanding the economy, it's clear a dramatic shift is under
way."-- "Wall Street Journal"
"Zucman writes crisply and is forthright in his scorn for tax
fraud. He also briefly addresses solutions to corporate tax
manipulation, whereby multinationals shift income to tax havens. .
. . Zucman's eye-opening study will be of interest to all readers
concerned about growing wealth disparity and is a fitting
supplement to Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas
Piketty."-- "Library Journal, starred review"
"Zucman, a young French economist now at the London School of
Economics and the University of California at Berkeley, has written
a masterful survey of the origins, importance, and dangers of tax
havens. The Hidden Wealth of Nations is a tremendously important
contribution to the current discussion of how to adjust the world's
income-tax systems, which are over a century old, to the realities
of the 21st century."
-- "American Prospect"
"Zucman's main achievement in this slim volume is to have
quantified these thefts: $200 billion in state revenues lost
through private individuals' use of tax havens, plus another $130
billion in losses created by U.S. firms booking their profits
offshore. . . . Zucman showcases this remarkable feat in unusually
lucid and elegant prose--particularly for an
economist--complemented by an admirable grasp of history. His
review of the ways that efforts to combat tax evasion have stalled
for the past century makes the book a worthwhile read in and of
itself. But perhaps the most ambitious aspect of Zucman's work is
his claim that, despite the immense scale of the problem, there are
ways to solve it and thereby put a stop to the recurrent economic
and political crises triggered by the use of offshore finance. . .
. Zucman is still at the beginning of what promises to be a
brilliant career."
-- "Atlantic"
"Gabriel Zucman has two goals in his new book, The Hidden Wealth of
Nations: to specify the costs of tax havens, and to figure out how
to reduce those costs. He writes with moral passion, even outrage;
he sees tax havens as a 'scourge.'" "Zucman has produced an
important book, above all because of his effort to calculate the
magnitude of the world's hidden wealth. . . . A strong virtue of
Zucman's book is that it puts a bright spotlight on an area in
which significant reforms might appeal to people who otherwise
disagree on a great deal. You might believe that the tax system
should be made more progressive, or you might believe that it
should be made less so. But whatever you think, you are unlikely to
support a situation in which trillions of dollars are hardly taxed
at all."--Cass Sunstein "New York Review of Books"
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