'A brief but crucially important book' Marcus Chown
InThe Joy of Tax, tax campaigner Richard Murphy challenges almost every idea you have about tax. For him, tax is fundamentally about the ideas that shape the sort of society we want to live in, not technicalities. His intention is to demonstrate that there is indeed a joy in tax, and by embracing it we can create a fairer society and change the world for the better.
Tax has been a feature of human society for a very long time. Almost no one gives tax a good press even though, as Richard Murphy argues, it has been fundamental to the development of democracy the world over. Whilst we may not like tax very much, in contrast it is clear that we really do like the public services which governments provide. So much so, in fact, that for most of the last 300 years, people have been more than happy for governments to run deficits by spending more than they raise in taxation.
2008 apparently changed all that. The issues of debt, deficits, cuts and austerity have dominated the political agenda ever since. Virtually every aspect of the government's finances and how to rearrange them in the forlorn hope of balancing the books has been discussed in great detail. Despite that, there has been almost no real discussion during this period about what tax is for and how it contributes to the creation of the society we aspire to.
Richard Murphy is a UK chartered accountant. He was senior partner of a practicing firm and director of a number of entrepreneurial companies before becoming one of the founders of the Tax Justice Network in 2003. He now directs Tax Research UK and writes, broadcasts and blogs extensively.
Richard created the country-by-country reporting concept for multinational companies and has been credited with creating much of the debate on tax gaps in the UK and Europe. He also defined the term secrecy jurisdictions, now widely used in debates on offshore taxation. He has been described as the architect of 'Corbynomics' as part of the Corbyn campaign for leadership of the labour party.
Richard is joint author ofTax Havens, The True Story of Globalisationand sole author ofThe Courageous State. In 2015 he became Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London.
