Dirty Secrets: How Tax Havens Destroy the Economy

by Richard Murphy

Overview

What happens when the rich are allowed to hide their money in tax havens, and what we should do about it

The Panama Papers were a reminder of how the superrich are allowed to hide their wealth from the rest of us. Dirty Secrets uncovers the extent of the corruption behind this crisis and shows what needs to be done in the face of this unregulated spread of rampant greed.

Tax havens, we are often told, are part of the global architecture of capitalism, providing a freedom from regulation necessary to make markets work. In this book, leading authority Richard Murphy uncovers the truth behind this lie. The fact of the matter is that this increasingly popular practice threatens the foundations of democracy, sowing mistrust and creating a regime based upon opacity.

As Murphy shows, how we manage our economy is a political decision, and one that can be changed. Dirty Secrets proposes ways to regulate tax havens and what the world might look like without them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786631671
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	03/21/2017
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Richard Murphy is a UK chartered accountant and has been described as the architect of “Corbynomics.” In 2015, he became Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London. He is author of The Joy of Tax and The Courageous State, and co-author of Tax Havens.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 The Story of Tax Havens 7

2 The Problems of Secrecy 29

3 What Is a Tax Haven? 51

4 The Tax Haven World 79

5 The Cost of Tax Havens 105

6 Tackling Tax Havens 123

7 The Post-Tax Haven World 161

Acknowledgements 181

Appendix 1 Financial Secrecy Index 183

Appendix 2 Tax Justice Network Assessment Criteria 191

Appendix 3 Secrecy Index Ratings 193

Notes 199

Index 209

Editorial Reviews

Richard Murphy is a rare voice of sanity at a time of economic madness.”
—Owen Jones, author of The Establishment

“Backed by years of experience and fired by relentless energy and a burning sense of anger at what the offshore system of tax havens is doing to our fragile world, Richard Murphy’s tireless work at the leading edge of the tax justice campaigns has helped open the world’s eyes to the scale and nature of this growing, metastatising threat to our democracies and our economies. Dirty Secrets makes essential reading for those wanting to understand where it all went wrong.”
—Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands

“Richard Murphy has for decades been a leading voice on the left arguing for international tax reform. He fizzes with ideas about how policy-makers should organise policies on an international scale … argues that if we manage to stamp out tax havens, the rewards will be bountiful: inequality will fall, and so too the cost of capital. Regulation, markets and even democracy will function better.”
—Prospect

“The Panama Papers detailed corruption by design, and here the fearless author of The Joy of Tax uses them as a jumping-off point to detail, with insight, forensic precision and pugnacity, the truth behind the lie that tax havens are a reasonable part of global capitalism.”
—Times Higher Education

“Murphy’s book aggressively attacks the world’s tax havens—or ‘secrecy jurisdictions,’ as he calls them. Their most corrosive effect, in his judgement, is not to allow individuals (including criminals) and corporations to avoid or evade taxes, although that is important. Rather, the worst thing about tax havens is the way in which they prevent the kind of transparency in transactions that any well-functioning market requires … If the secrecy jurisdictions were curtailed, the world would be a much better place, Murphy contends: democracies would be stronger, and markets more efficient.”
—Richard N. Cooper, Foreign Affairs

From the Publisher