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THE HIDDEN WEALTH OF NATIONS PDF, EPUB, EBOOK David Halpern | 280 pages | 21 Dec 2009 | Polity Press | 9780745648026 | English | Oxford, United Kingdom Invisible hand - Wikipedia Teresa Lavender Fagan Translation ,. Thomas Piketty Foreword. One much-discussed solution to this imbalance is to significantly increase the rate at which we tax the wealthy. In The Hidden Wealth of Nations , Zucman offers an inventive and sophisticated 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. Fighting the notion that any attempts to vanquish tax havens are futile, since some countries will always offer more advantageous tax rates than others, as well the counter-argument that since the financial crisis tax havens have disappeared, 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 enormity of the secret wealth can we begin to estimate the kind of actions that would force tax havens to give up their practices. 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. If we are to find a way to solve the problem of increasing inequality, The Hidden Wealth of Nations is essential reading. Get A Copy. Hardcover , pages. Published September 22nd by University of Chicago Press. More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Hidden Wealth of Nations , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about The Hidden Wealth of Nations. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Apr 01, Mehrsa rated it really liked it. You don't need to read the whole book to get the gist, which is basically that there are billions maybe trillions of dollars missing from every country's tax balances because rich people are hiding their money in tax shelters. Let's go get it. View 2 comments. Apr 14, Patrick F rated it it was amazing. Hot Take: For those interested in knowing more about tax havens and the PanamaPapers this is a foundational resource. This doesn't cover the PanamaPapers - this book came out last year - but this book does unpack just what tax-havens are and their implications for governance capability. Not only does Zucman explain the history of tax havens beginning between the the World Wars, particularly in Switzerland, he also diagnoses the problem with half-hearted solutions that the world has tried to imp Hot Take: For those interested in knowing more about tax havens and the PanamaPapers this is a foundational resource. Not only does Zucman explain the history of tax havens beginning between the the World Wars, particularly in Switzerland, he also diagnoses the problem with half-hearted solutions that the world has tried to implement, including a recent OECD proposal of on-demand information sharing. Further, Zucman actually proposes solutions to the global tax haven problem. One I like to call an act of deterrence; the other is an act of compliance. France, Germany, and Italy could team up together in a coalition and impose customs duties on goods they import from Switzerland that is proportional to the amount of benefits that Switzerland receives from storing all of these profits. This is act of deterrence. Finally, there must be a creation of a public, or at least solely under the control of governments and not private entities, global wealth register. Before the world can even begin thinking about such things as a global wealth tax, a register of stocks, bonds, and shares long term, this also has to include derivatives must be first on a list of solutions. In an era of austerity where average people are told to expect less and demand less, a book such as The Hidden Wealth of Nations, illuminates the truth: there can be global cooperation and it doesn't have to be in support of the very few; we can do this for the global community. Also, this study illuminates the fact that, like almost every other facet of governments, to do nothing and to cut government spending is a choice and it is not a imperative. Approximately one out of every ten taxable dollars is going untaxed - to the detriment of teachers, low-income communities, shareholders, even in some ways, governments around the world, especially Britain, Germany, France, and the U. Far from a conspiracy, the reality is that a select few "countries" on Earth have sold their sovereignty on the free market on a race to the bottom, functioning as neoliberal libertarian utopians for the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations. This money is mostly not taxed - approx. We can change this. Apr 08, Meghan rated it liked it Shelves: , finance-econ. Concise and powerful delivery of some staggering figures. Interesting that the U. I wouldn't have expected that. Mar 09, Martin rated it it was amazing. Really great introduction to the topic, well-written, and at about pgs it's not wasting anyone's time. View all 5 comments. Jan 11, Bob Anderson rated it it was amazing. These numbers should be equal, by GAAP. So there are six trillion dollars in assets that are simply not there; the question is, where are they? How are they hidden? And what are the consequences of this? This is a laser-tight exploration of these questions, and is simply a great read. If you want to learn how those who are willing to play loose with the spirit of the law can accumulate wealth safe from any prying taxmen, look no further. Jul 02, Rj rated it it was amazing. Zucman looks at the history of tax havens beginning with Switzerland and how they have proliferated across the globe. While figures for hidden wealth are hard to analyze Zucman uses formulas to arrive at estimates for how much wealth remains untaxed in these havens. He finishes offering suggestions on how to stem the problem, citing the biggest problem is that those who use tax havens also have access to political power ensuring that laws will not change. Jan 11, howl of minerva marked it as to-read Shelves: read-in-part , economics- finance. Aug 17, Laurent Michiels rated it it was amazing Recommends it for:. Tax havens have received a lot of press attention in recent years, with the uncovering of LuxLeaks, Panama Papers, etc. Building on his academic research, Gabriel Zucman goes beyond the anecdotical evidence by writing a concise yet comprehensive take on the phenomenon of tax havens. One of the main achievements of the author is to quantify the extent of tax evasion by tapping into various statistical database. Doing so, he astonishingly estimates that c. Obviously this is problematic, since it increases the burden on law-abiding citizens that do pay their fair share of taxes as the taxes that are evaded need to be compensated for by higher taxes in general. He quantifies that this boils down to a staggering amount of c. The author further critically assesses existing measures that have been taken so far in Europe and the US to curb tax evasion and also sheds light on which characteristics would make reforms the most effective. His proposed solutions include i a global publically-owned financial register of financial wealth which records who owns which financial products; ii automatic exchange of information between banks of all tax havens and foreign tax authorities; and iii a multilateral joint effort to penalize tax haven countries that do not cooperate by introducing sanctions e. He suggests that corporate taxation should be done on worldwide consolidated profits instead, since these cannot be manipulated. Profits should then be attributed to different countries using a formula based on e. I highly recommend this easy-to-read and well-structured book, which has significant implications for policymakers. The proposed solutions will undoubtedly require much courage to be implemented, but by quantifying the problem, Zucman has made an important contribution to further fuel the debate and guide policy. Indeed, even though the most recent publication of the book dates from , the topic remains as relevant today. Jul 04, Siah rated it it was amazing. My mind is blown! Gabriel Zucman has done a wonderful job researching this book. Especially since collecting data for this book should have been extremely difficult. After all there is nothing more secretive than the details of the trillions of dollars that are sheltered in Switzerland. I used to think the rich just parks its money in Switzerland or in the Cayman Islands just to hide their wealth but God the actual system that is devised to help the wealthy is more complex than that. They have t My mind is blown! They have turned financial engineering to the new and questionable heights. The book walks you through how the wealthy registers a pair of companies in the US and in the Switzerland or in Ireland and uses this pair to shelter money in a very convoluted fashion. You have to read the book to truly understand the complexity of this system. The book is so well researched and so detailed I wouldn't be surprised if I imagine the author can update the book with new material on how cryptocurrencies have made this system more complex.

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