Tax Havens: How Globalisation Really Works

Publisher: Cornell University Press; paperback 280 pages

This book is not a neutral examination of tax havens in an increasingly globalized world. The authors approach their analysis from a particular perspective no doubt familiar to those who have come across their other work.

The introduction starts with the failure of Northern Rock and its wholesale fund raiser Granite a Jersey company owned by a charitable trust. The authors 'do not suggest that tax havens caused the financial crisis of 2008/09 but... believe they were one of the most important actors precipitating it’.

The book then canters through a world of finance where tax havens do not charge tax and keep their users’ affairs confidential. Major jurisdictions such as the UK and the USA act as tax havens in some ways as well as European and Asian medium-sized economies and the...