STARI Lunchtime Seminar

Challenges in International Taxation: Wealth Taxes and Offshore Tax Structuring Wealth taxation to fight global inequality has become an emerging trend in recent years. One of the most prominent models for wealth taxation is Gabriel Zucman’s “Billionaire Tax” that was presented to the G20 Summit in Brazil in 2024 and is currently discussed in many countries including the United States and France. In this seminar, Professor Wolfgang Schön, Director of the Department of Business and Tax Law at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance in Munich will discuss the characteristics and merits of the Zucman tax from a conceptual, constitutional and comparative perspective. This will be followed with a presentation by Professor Li Jinyan from the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, who will examine why addressing offshore tax structuring remains an intriguing tax law problem for countries with open economies and high-level of taxation. Drawing on insights from Canadian statutory design and international tax policy, her presentation will explore the core paradoxes embedded in the international tax system, such as legal fictions v. economic substance and fiscal realities, the “double-edged sword” of tax policy trade-off, and mobility of capital v. tax sovereignty and enforceability of national tax laws.