Taxes on the wealthy are a topic sure to incite venomous rants from both right-wing and left-wing ideologues. The topic attracts conflicting interpretations and policy recommendations, and generates proposals for tax reform that consume political debate. All this activity takes place against an opaque backdrop of empirical evidence dealing with the distribution of wealth and income, and tax avoidance and tax evasion by corporations and wealthy individuals. Rethinking Wealth and Taxes explores these problems and considers the possibilities for increasing taxes on wealth to address the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth and income.

This monograph analyses the conditions in which gains or losses from international tax avoidance are more or less likely for the avoiding taxpayer, the rest of the taxpaying community and the tax authorities at home and abroad and names the countries whose tax systems render them most exposed to these gains and losses. The conclusion is that national governments and intergovernmental organisations seeking to suppress international tax avoidance may do more harm than good to the tax revenues as well as to the taxpaying communitites of the countries concerned, especially if the avoidance is formal rather than substantial in character, and that all measures against international tax avoidance should be supported by an economic estimate of the gains and losses from avoidance and the losses and gains from its suppression.

This collective book offers a panorama of the history of tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax havens from the nineteenth century to the present day, based on the latest research in contemporary history. It aims to show that this phenomenon is at the heart of global capitalism, partly as a response of the ruling classes to the rise of progressive taxation, but for other reasons too: notably the development of a powerful tax evasion and avoidance industry in different countries. The book argues that tax competition between states has stimulated the development of tax havens. It discusses the notion of the ‘tax haven’ and proposes a more rigorous concept - that of the ‘tax predator’. Finally, the book sheds light on the socio-political conflicts that have developed around tax evasion and the way in which states have fought against or tolerated the phenomenon.

Because every nominal dollar of tax revenue really costs taxpayers $1.65, many of us who are supposed beneficiaries of federal programs are unknowingly engaged in what Payne identifies as self-subsidy - we are in fact paying in more than we get back, subsidizing the very help the government "gives" us. Moreover, while it is imposing hidden monetary burdens, the tax system is literally driving people crazy. Costly Returns recounts the sometimes extreme anxiety and stress suffered by citizens forced to endure the arbitrariness, invasion of privacy, denial of civil rights, and other abuses of a coercive tax system. Why has the tax system become so burdensome? The answer lies in the strangely biased policy-making climate in Washington, where tax officials dominate the debates on tax regulations and where the taxpayer point of view is seldom heard. Payne recommends a novel way to correct this imbalance: Require the IRS to compensate taxpayers for the private sector costs it forces on them.