Book Review: Tax Justice and Tax Law: Understanding Unfairness in Tax Systems

Abstract

This book is a selection of papers presented at the Fourth Tax Policy Conference at the University of Cambridge Centre for Tax Law in July 2019. The editors of the volume, Dominic de Cogan and Peter Harris, have undertaken a formidable task in bringing together different approaches to the idea of tax justice. The purpose, however, is not to reconcile or, as described in the foreword, “to iron out” the differences in the approaches and ideas, but to understand “how to agree and disagree about tax justice” (p. i). The contributions are collected in five parts, “Conceptions of Justice”, “Social Provision”, “Citizenship”, “International”, and “Justice and Procedures”, preceded by “Mapping Tax Justice Arguments,” an introductory chapter by Dominic de Cogan. An insightful and detailed review of the book’s contribution to the debate in tax law by Peter Hongler (2021) was published in Intertax. This review will focus on the relevance of the discussion for the research and practice in tax administration. Thus, it contains more details about the contributions where actions of tax authorities are considered explicitly and only a brief summary of other parts of the book.