In September 2016, members of the Cambridge Tax Discussion Group participated in a plenary at the 34th Annual Cambridge Economic Crime Symposium held at Jesus College. During our weekly meetings leading up to the conference, a topic was chosen by interested participants in the group and “The criminalization of tax avoidance” was proposed to stimulate debate. We decided to produce a series of working papers in response to Richard Gordon and Andrew Morriss’ article “Moving Money: International Financial Flows, Taxes, & Money Laundering” (Hastings International and Comparative Law Review, 2013, Vol. 37, No. 1) and invited the co-authors to Cambridge to take part in the debate. The result was an interesting mix of responses from panelists from the OECD, U.S. Department of Justice,  Department of Sociology, Faculty of Law, and Department of Economics from Cambridge.

Dominic de Cogan presenting to the conference

Alfred Duncan discussing his work on tax shields

A resulting editorial commentary by myself, May Hen, was published in the Journal of Money Laundering Control and a larger series is being put together by participants to be published as a special issue this year. It is hoped that this forthcoming issue will serve as a central stimulant for further debate at the 35th Annual Cambridge Economic Crime Symposium surrounding current tax issues. If you are interested in taking part this year in either the special issue or Economic Crime Symposium, please contact me at hmh46@cam.ac.uk