Gabriel Zucman

As is well known, only two things are certain in the world: death and taxes. However, Benjamin Franklin’s bon mot does not seem to apply to everyone. Multinational corporations are developing ever more sophisticated methods to channel their profits past the tax authorities, tax havens are undercutting each other in the competition for the money of the wealthy. In the USA, thanks to Trump’s reforms, billionaires now have to cede less to the state than their assistants.

The two economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman reconstruct how this injustice could have occurred. They explain tax avoidance strategies, show how tax justice and inequality are linked, and formulate proposals for fairer tax systems in a globalised world.

Gabriel Zucman is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Excellence Award in Global Economic Affairs from the Institute for World Economics in 2017. His most recent publication by Suhrkamp Verlag was Steueroasen. Where the wealth of nations is hidden (2014).