Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow

Global tax policy has long determined which states can access the resources necessary to flourish. Today, even the wealthiest states struggle to tax rich individuals and multinationals. Anti-Black racism has enriched affluent states at the expense of marginalized ones and undermined the taxing power of all nations.
In a compelling narrative interwoven with personal storytelling, Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law: The Story of Global Jim Crow connects Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s metaphor of the ＂bad check＂-representing unfulfilled promises of freedom and equality to Black Americans-to contemporary anti-Black global tax policies. The book uncovers lost connections, such as those between Edwin Seligman, an architect of our global tax system, and the Dunning School, which laid the foundation for Jim Crow laws, and between Stanley Surrey, a Harvard professor and advisor to President John F. Kennedy, and key moments of the Cold War.
Furthermore, it takes a global view and reveals how racial panic triggered by African decolonization allowed an exclusive club of white countries to deliver a second bad check to newly sovereign states like Kenya and Nigeria. By circumventing the inclusive one-country, one-vote system of the United Nations, the OECD and its double tax treaty dismantled the generous arrangements that helped Europe rebuild after both World Wars.
Racial Capitalism and International Tax Law exposes the surprising role anti-Black racism played in shaping an international tax system that benefits billionaires at the expense of billions of people. This eye-opening account challenges readers to rethink the global tax system and its profound impact on racial and economic justice.

Steven A. Dean is an award-winning author and a Professor of Law and the Paul Siskind Research Scholar at Boston University. He has spoken at the United Nations and testified in Congress about the impact of racism on tax law. Dean’s work forced President Biden to change course on tax havens and forced the leading international tax policymaking organization to withdraw a major marketing brochure. He led the world’s foremost graduate tax law program at NYU and practiced tax with leading global law firms. He earned his law degree from Yale and has published four previous books, including two with Oxford.