Michael Devereux (Oxford)
Lilian Faulhaber (Georgetown)
Michelle Hanlon (MIT)
Jim Hines (Michigan)
Wolfgang Schön (Max Planck)
John Vella (Oxford)
What is OMG?
On behalf of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation, University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, and Georgetown University Law Center, we are excited to announce the OMG Transatlantic Tax Talks will continue this academic year. (Why OMG? Oxford-Michigan-MIT-Munich-Georgetown.)
This speaker series will be taking place on Zoom. It is an interdisciplinary series, with experts in taxation from law, economics, and accounting presenting their work.
Steven Dean, Brooklyn Law School, will present his paper "Surrey’s Silence: Subpart F and the Swiss Subsidiary Tax That Never was" on Thursday 20 April.
All talks will be on Zoom at 11:00 Eastern time/4:00 UK/5:00 CET. Presenters will speak for about 20 minutes, and the remaining 40 minutes will be used for Q&A.
Surrey's Silence: Subpart F and the Swiss Subsidiary Tax that Never Was
Was Stanley Surrey racist? Was he a coward for not speaking as plainly about the Swiss tax haven problem in public as the Surrey Papers reveal his team did in private? In the broad sweep of history Surrey’s silence may have mattered a great deal or it may have mattered very little. The quiet aspect of the Liberia problem that it highlights undoubtedly does. Exploiting the public’s misunderstanding of the term tax haven as Surrey quickly learned to do has become second nature to scholars and policymakers alike. No less powerful than the loud aspect of the Liberia problem, the dog whistle politics it embodies demean all those who harness it by railing against tax havens just as it does those who decry “welfare cheats or illegal aliens.” Banning the term would not solve the Liberia problem, but everyone who uses it must be aware of the risks they court and the lasting damage they cause by doing so.
