Call for Papers: Tax Havens

Globalisation has meant that multinational corporations and wealthy individuals can shift tax liabilities from high to low tax countries as standard operation. We know little about these movements but the Panama Papers gave us an insight into an opaque system that is geared exclusively to the evasion of taxes. Wealthy individuals regularly move funds to undeclared bank accounts in offshore tax havens, and companies are increasingly shifting profits through Bermuda, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands and other such offshore jurisdictions. The best guesses suggest that there are approximately 60 secrecy jurisdictions, divided largely into three groups – European, British and American. In addition, legions of bankers, accountants and lawyers, hedge and other rentier type funds are all involved in a global industry devoted to hiding tax liabilities. Both London and New York play a major part in the tax evasion and avoidance industry – the City of London and Wall Street –function as powerful offshore tax havens, because both are actively engaged in   attracting funds from all and sundry. The scope and magnitude of the industry is mind boggling.

“According to some measures, over half of banking assets and liabilities are routed through secrecy jurisdictions; more than half of world trade passes (on paper) through them; virtually every major multinational company uses secrecy jurisdictions for a variety of unspecified purposes, and at least US$21 trillion of private financial assets are held in offshore structures worldwide, largely escaping taxes, criminal laws, financial regulation and disclosure.”

Tax havens are therefore at the very heart of capitalism and according to tax evasion expert Nicholas Shaxson have been instrumental in nearly every “major economic event, in every big financial crisis since the 1970s including the global financial crisis of 2008.

WSER through this CFP encourages the submission of articles on tax evasion, tax justice, the role of offshore jurisdictions in contemporary capitalism, or any related aspect of the tax avoidance and tax evasion. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Inequality;
• Licit and Illicit Transfers;
• Transfer Pricing;
• Money Laundering;
• Global Wealth Chains;
• Terrorism;
• Economic development and offshore jurisdictions.

Submissions from all disciplines are welcome. If you have an idea for a paper, please send us an email sketching your thoughts. We will let you know very quickly if you are on track for producing a piece (from 2000 to 5000 words) suitable for publication in WSER.

Important dates

• July 20, 2017 – Proposal deadline
• October  15, 2017 – Submission  deadline
• December  30, 2017 – Publication target date

Thank you for your consideration,

Rex McKenzie, r.mckenzie@kingston.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in Economics, Kingston University, London, England

Susan Feiner, sffein@maine.edu
Professor of Economics, Professor of Women and Gender Studies University of Southern Maine, Portland ME

Devrim Yilmaz, s.yilmaz@kingston.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer in Economics, Kingston University, London, England

World Social and Economic Review ISSN: 2049-3517

Published by the World Economics Association

Sister WEA open-access journals: Economic Thought and Real-World Economics Review