In November last year, countries at the UN have adopted by a landslide a resolution to begin the process of establishing a UN framework convention on tax, which has the potential to be the biggest shake-up of the international tax system in history. The framework convention would require global tax rules to be decided at the UN instead of the OECD, where these have been decided by a small club of rich countries for over sixty years.
Over the past decades the world has experienced a process of financial integration and capital liberalisation that has permitted an increase in foreign capital accumulation, especially since the 1990s. Gross foreign assets and liabilities have become larger almost everywhere, but particularly in rich countries, and foreign wealth has reached around 2 times the size of the global GDP. The unequal distribution of this external wealth, with the top 20 % richest countries capturing more than 90% of total foreign wealth, poses constraints on the poorest countries.
The goal of taxjusticenow.org (a World Inequality Lab project) is to help citizens understand and participate in the tax debate. We see it as an essential companion to our 2019 book The Triumph of Injustice. On taxjusticenow.org, you can visualize how much each income group pays in taxes when we include all taxes (income taxes, corporate taxes, payroll taxes, consumption taxes, etc.) at all levels of government (federal, state, and local). Plus you can explore how changing existing taxes—such as increasing individual income tax rates—or creating new taxes—such as a progressive wealth tax or a value added tax—would affect tax revenue, tax progressivity, and inequality. We also model the tax plans of the main presidential candidates (and will update them as new or refined proposals come in). But you don't have to wait and can immediately build up your favorite tax plan and become an active participant in the debate.