The Roosevelt Institute published a 180-page report on the methodological and administrative challenges of wealth taxation and I love them for it.

In honour of the FT and Statista declaring Deloitte and PwC the top consultancies for sustainability services, worth re-upping @rosiecollington.bsky.social's and my piece on the rise of climate consulting:

1/ Big news! Today, we officially launch the International Tax Observatory (#ITO)🚀 Building on the foundation of the EUTO, we are expanding our mission to address global tax evasion, wealth concentration, illicit financial flows & the intersection of taxation & the environment.

Doom loop continues to doom loop

All-timer from Lex today

Loving (hating) this new Spotify spin-off

New survey: Only 17% of Danes now see the U.S. as an ally; 60% as adversary.

The FT remains the only good global newspaper, exhibit #923

My colleague Kevin Munger asked me and a bunch of editors to sit and think through AI and peer review. Our take: osf.io/9sxnc/files/... We envision an increased (!) involvement of humans in the evaluation of social science.

Det vælter ind med selskabsskat: 112 mia kr. i 2024. Men det er i stigende grad båret af nogle få selskaber, særligt Novo som har været den største skattebetaler hvert år siden 2018. I 2024 betalte Novo alene godt 20% af den samlede selskabsskat. (Det er altså ikke normalt, hvis man er i tvivl.)

How my Gen Z colleagues see me when I try to “stay with it” in the office discourse

Yasss

Getting ready to teach on the Cuban missile crisis and hoping the students will appreciate how strange it is that the son of one of the main calming protagonists has become a defining political monster of today, a true world-destroyer

Læs hvad Rune skriver. Det danske skattesystem har en masse glimrende checks-and-balances. Det er et absurd - og kontraproduktivt - mål at hver enkelt initiativ i sig selv skal være skåret til med en skalpel.

There's a dollar "vibe shift" happening now that is different from past bouts of dollar pessimism. You might be skeptical. That's understandable since the de-dollarization narrative has been around for years now, and little has changed about the dollar's global position. 1/

Tired: Eurodollars Wired: Euro>dollars

A thing I like here is (implicitly) bringing the sociology of conferences to political science. What is elsewhere called "field-configuring events" (of which Davos is a great case) is an instructive lens for understanding world politics.

The torment nexus meme comes full circle

Financial war in response to trade war and territorial threats? More and more people appear to be calling for it. So I updated my post on U.S. Treasuries holdings—now with the latest data. benjaminbraun.org/posts/treasu...

I know it's all unhinged but "I was only interested in peace so that I could get a prize for it" is up there, truly

It’s not only that the ACI is designed to respond to outside coercion. It was designed so *specifically because of Trump trade threats in his first term* (notably over EU digital services taxes).

Damn there’s some bleak shit happening out there

This is all so stupid, sigh

Massive crowds on the street in Copenhagen in solidarity with Greenland and against US aggression. Thousands of Greenlandic flags 🇬🇱💪

Happy to be part of the new EU Tax Compass consortium, funded by the European Commission, with good colleagues at CBS and from across Europe, headed up by the folks at Bruegel.

Extra proud to call @cornelban.bsky.social colleague today. www.cbs.dk/en/winner-im...

If you want to understand the practical implications of the recent OECD-level “side-by-side” agreement that shields (in part) US multinationals from the global minimum tax, this assessment from former OECD tax chief Pascal Saint-Amans is truly excellent:

An unmissable resource every year

“Given a significant number of [US commercial ships] are beneficially owned by Danish operators, and are integral to the US Maritime Security Program it may appear that Denmark possesses a rather potent “rare earth” of its own” Danish weaponized interdependence, anyone?

Udover at formueskat nu (måske) kommer ind i den danske politiske debat igen, så er forslaget om at fixe det gabende ejer-smutholder der fuldstændig underminerer top-top-skatten interessant. Harmonisering er en no-brainer (om man så vil have top-top-skatten ned eller kapitalindkomstskatten op).

Get your news the good places, folks:

Your latest episode in the long-running hit series, "EU tax unanimity effectively no longer exists": the Commission believes it can simply make OECD guidance EU law per a notice. eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-conten...

Rubbernecking-style fascinated with this jumbled-up McKinsey “folk IR” analysis of global cooperation for the World Economic Forum www.weforum.org/publications...

New year, new paper! 🎉⭐ How do elite corporate professionals become... elite? In this paper, I conceptualize and study "trajectories to the top" as a series of status trade-offs across organizations (not just the climbing of an in-house career ladder). Fully open access: doi.org/10.1093/jpo/...

1. This is insane (goes without saying). 2. The length serves a reminder of the breadth and depth and importance of international cooperation in every aspect of our lives today. 3. Note what's *not* on this list: WTO, World Bank, OECD, G7/G20, lots of big UN bodies (WHO, UNICEF, UNDP), etc.

Doctorow comes for academia

New year, new paper! 🎉⭐ How do elite corporate professionals become... elite? In this paper, I conceptualize and study "trajectories to the top" as a series of status trade-offs across organizations (not just the climbing of an in-house career ladder). Fully open access: doi.org/10.1093/jpo/...

Since the hegemon's eye is now focussing on Greenland, I recommend revisting our research note in @bjsociology.bsky.social on the Power elite in Greenland onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

FT reports China (the last holdout) lifted its objections to the minimum tax deal in the last few days. It’s not immediately clear what they got in return, but the deal does open the door for other countries to get similar treatment as the US, which we know China (and India) had sought.

White smoke! The US finally gets its businesses a long-desired "exemption" from the 15% global minimum tax, agreed by all 147 members of the OECD Inclusive Framework. This is a big one.

Student snowball fight outside my office window and the uni library just launched free faculty subscriptions to the FT. Today is a good day.

I continue to think @chrislhayes.bsky.social's point that our world is now over-engineered for the empty calories of social attention rather than the healthy meal of human recognition explains a lot about, well, everything.

If you have to expressly stress that you are allies, then you probably aren't.

There's this assumption that, sure, of course PwC and the Big Four can simply and succesfully extend into crypto services, policy allowing. Not so, as recent research shows: the cultural and organizational reform required is a substantial barrier.

There’s a line here whereby carving out techno-libertarian ‘zones’ in your jurisdiction (ala Honduras) becomes a viable territorial self-defence strategy against Trump’s global ambitions.

I am late to the party (it launched a year ago) but just realized there’s now a Zotero app! And it’s nice! Much preferable to PaperShip that I had been rolling with for years. Tip hereby passed on.

Enjoyed reading this @maharafiatal.bsky.social-organized forum on modern tech oligarch's claims to sovereignty (and its implications). Refreshing new lines of theoretical questions on the entanglement of states and corporations.

A news day of juxtaposition:

Reading @quinnslobodian.com's Crack-Up chapter on Liechtenstein as a market radical fetish, fun to revisit Katrin Eggenberger's piece - she did fieldwork in the principality, interviewing two Prime Ministers - arguing they basically DGAF'ed being blacklisted a tax haven (but not a money launderer)

Writing up notes for a presentation for a bunch of lawyers: "1) I am not a lawyer, 2) I am not a lawyer, 3) I am not a lawyer..."