Symposium paper: Globalisation, taxation and inequality

As inequality has risen around the world, the importance of tax design for achieving equity objectives has become increasingly widely discussed and is the focus of much recent public finance research. At the same time, globalisation and the increasing international mobility of capital have brought international and jurisdictional issues in tax policy to the fore for many countries and for the international community more generally.

This set of issues was showcased at the 4th World Bank Tax Conference in September 2022, which focused on ‘Global Tax Equity’. The set of perspectives papers in this symposium showcases some of the key policy questions and discussions from that meeting of academic researchers, tax and development practitioners and policymakers. 

In the paper entitled ‘Globalisation, taxation and inequality’, Gabriel Zucman summarises the arguments he presented in his keynote address to that conference. He discusses the way current tax systems heavily favour capital and capital income at the expense of labour, and argues this is not appropriate for our times. Whilst he welcomes some recent changes such as the advent of the global minimum tax, he also makes a number of further suggestions and recommendations for the future direction of national and international tax policy.