Tax Cooperation in an Unjust World

The way that nation states design their tax systems impacts the sharing of resources and wealth within and across societies. To date, wealthy countries have made tax policy design and coordination choices which allow them to claim more than they are justifiably entitled to from the global economy. In Tax Cooperation in an Unjust World, Allison Christians and Laurens van Apeldoorn show how this presently accepted reality both facilitates and feeds off continued human suffering, and therefore violates conceptions of international distributive justice. They examine two principles that govern tax cooperation across states, and explain how the current international tax order impedes their realization. They then show how states could work toward fulfilling the principles and building a fairer international tax system via incremental yet effective adaptation of key international tax norms and rules.

Allison Christians is the H. Heward Stikeman Chair in Tax Law at McGill University, where she researches national and international tax law and policy. She focuses specifically on the relationship between taxation and economic development, as well as the role of institutions in the creation of tax
policy norms. Before her academic career, she practiced tax law at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. She has been named one of the Global Tax 50 most influential individuals in international taxation.

Laurens van Apeldoorn is Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law and Legal Theory at the Open University, the Netherlands. His work on the intersection of law and philosophy is part of the research programme Transformative Effects of Globalisation in Law, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education.
Before joining the Open University, he was Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Leiden University. He has been O'Brien Fellow in Residence at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, McGill University, and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto.