We present here the first machine-generated law review article. Our self-interest motivates us to believe that knowledge workers who write complex articles drawing upon years of research and effort are safe from AI developments. However, how reasonable is it to persist in this belief given recent advances in AI research? With that topic in mind, we caused GPT-3, a state-of-the-art AI, to generate a paper that explains “why humans will always be better lawyers, drivers, CEOs, presidents, and law professors than artificial intelligence and robots can ever hope to be.” The resulting paper, with no edits apart from giving it a title and bolding the headings generated by GPT-3, is reproduced below. It is imperfect in a humorous way. Ironically, it is publishable “as-is” only because it is machine-generated. Nevertheless, the resulting paper is good enough to give us some pause for thought. Although GPT-3 is not up to the task of replacing law review authors currently, we are far less confident that GPT-5 or GPT-100 might not be up to the task in future.

Data leaks like the Panama Papers show how tax havens provide a secret offshore financial system that privileges three main actors: malefactors, millionaires, and multinational corporations. Such leaks have provided millions of documents detailing how certain taxpayers benefit from tax haven services. Wealthy criminals use the offshore world to anonymize their financial misdeeds and, in low-income countries, drain governments of valuable resources while citizens remain in dire circumstances. High-income taxpayers exploit the offshore world to legally reduce their tax bills, deploying techniques that are not available to ordinary-income taxpayers. The leaks also show how the wealthiest members of society—the top 0.01%—are more likely to engage in the criminal offense of offshore tax evasion by hiding their fortunes in tax havens. Finally, multinational corporations set up related corporations in tax havens to reduce global tax liabilities legally, providing higher returns for wealthier shareholders. By privileging the interests of criminals, millionaires, and corporations, the offshore world is exacerbating the growing income inequality found in much of the world. This Article considers legal and policy reforms to address this challenge.

An imbalance exists between tax authorities and taxpayers when it comes to the latter’s financial information. Taxpayers have the information they need to calculate their tax liabilities and file their returns. Tax authorities, on the other hand, tend to have little beyond what is in the tax return. Thus it can be hard for tax authorities to detect non-compliance. The solution? Pass laws to force the taxpayer (or a third party) to provide more and better information to tax authorities. In other words, increase tax transparency. This Article discusses broad international trends that have been the principal catalyst for tax transparency measures such as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, the Common Reporting Standard and Country-by-Country Reporting, which try to inhibit offshore tax evasion and non-compliant international tax avoidance. In a world where data is the “new oil,” tax advisers are increasingly called on to promote and protect their clients’ interests by advising on the collection, use, and disclosure of tax information.

In light of persistent terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere, the study of terrorist resourcing and financing has attracted renewed attention. How are terrorists’ networks financed? Who raises the financial “resources,” and how do they transfer them across borders? How does the global financial industry facilitate or impede these transfers? Answers to these and other questions can help law enforcement investigate, disrupt, and neutralize cross-border terrorist resourcing. Evidence and data on this phenomenon is scarce, of questionable quality, irreplicable, and can be difficult to come by. This study is the first comprehensive effort to collect, code, analyze, and compare available open-source case law data on transnational terrorist resourcing networks. Under the study’s methodology, the conventional yet strict focus on financing is broadened to resources, which includes forms other than cash, including trade-based fraud and online social networks. The analysis reveals common cross-border resourcing patterns and usage of financial intermediaries such as banks. It thus contributes to the ongoing optimization of anti-terrorist resourcing laws, policies, and risk-management practices.

This chapter looks at exchange of information (EOI) policies, proposing several ways to make EOI policies fairer and more efficient, so as to maximize their potential to reduce illicit financial flows and curb abusive tax practices that undermine human rights. While there appears increasing policy and academic support for EOI initiatives that promote global financial transparency, the current international tax regime, with its high transaction costs for taxpayers and tax authorities, does not seem particularly amenable to producing optimal outcomes. The chapter then emphasizes how, to promote enforceability, the ideal EOI system delivers high-quality tax information while providing needed legal protections for taxpayer privacy. The exchange and usage of high-quality tax information would reduce transaction costs for tax authorities as they could more readily identify taxpayers engaged in offshore tax evasion and aggressive international tax planning.

In the last 10 years, governments have initiated several reforms to automatically exchange bulk taxpayer information with other governments (mainly via the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, the common reporting standard, and country-by-country reporting). This enhanced sharing of tax information has been encouraged both by technological change, including digitization, big data, and data analytics; and by political trends, including governments' efforts to reduce offshore tax evasion and aggressive international tax avoidance. In some cases, however, legal protections for taxpayer privacy and other interests are insufficiently robust for this emerging international sharing framework. Conceptually, taxpayers should be seen as "data subjects" whose rights are proactively protected by data protection laws and policies, including fair information practices. An optimal regime, which would balance the interests of taxpayers against those of tax authorities, should include a multilateral taxpayer bill of rights, a cross-border withholding tax that could be imposed in lieu of information exchange, and a global financial registry that would allow governments to identify the beneficial owners of business and legal entities.

Law and technology matters have traditionally been researched in discrete categories such as intellectual property (e.g., copyright, patent, or trademark) or intermediary liability and responsibility (e.g., secondary liability and telecommunications regulation). In the last two decades, however, academics have studied the broader interaction between law and technology across legal fields. This Article examines progress to date and discusses two distinct perspectives on law and technology. The dominant approach has been an instrumentalist one that treats technology as a tool for individuals to use while downplaying its broader social implications. However, the fields of philosophy of technology, science and technology studies, and social studies of science are now mature enough to support a rival approach grounded in a deep understanding of the nature—rather than the results—of technological change. This substantivist approach suggests analytical principles to refine and improve technology law and policy in ways that rival, instrumentalist approaches have neglected. For instance, substantivist commitments support a law and technology construct called a “digital persona” to emphasize the need for laws and policies to promote autonomy within the online world. By contrasting instrumentalist and substantivist approaches, we demonstrate new ways to integrate ethics, policy, and law in the digital age.

In December 2016, the benchers (‘governors’) of the Law Society of Ontario adopted a series of Equity and Diversity Initiatives (“EDIs”), including requiring a mandatory Statement of Principles (the “SOP”). Under the new rule, the “Law Society will require every licensee [that is, lawyer or paralegal] to adopt and to abide by a statement of principles acknowledging their obligation to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion generally, and in their behavior towards colleagues, employees, clients and the public.” Lawyers and paralegals who do not follow this approach will first receive warnings, followed by sanctions, including the potential loss of license to practice. While I agree with the values of equality, diversity and social inclusion, in this Article I claim that the SOP coerces a licensee’s speech, thought and conscience in harmful ways and makes it harder for lawyers to fulfill their duty of loyalty to their client. Accordingly, the SOP seems to infringe or violate, among other things, Charter-protected rights to freedom of expression and conscience. By doing so, the SOP encourages anti-democratic outcomes such as chilling dissent, and harms the pursuit of greater equality.

While there is now significant literature in law, politics, economics, and other disciplines that examines tax havens, there is little information on what tax haven intermediaries—so-called offshore service providers— actually do to facilitate offshore evasion, international money laundering, and the financing of global terrorism. To provide insight into this secret world of tax havens, this Article relies on the Author’s study of big data derived from the financial data leak obtained by the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). A hypothetical involving Breaking Bad’s Walter White is used to explain how offshore service providers facilitate global financial crimes. A transaction cost perspective assists in understanding the information and incentive problems revealed by the ICIJ data leak, including how tax haven secrecy enables elites in nondemocratic countries to transfer their monies for ultimate investment in stable democratic countries. The approach also emphasizes how, even in a world of perfect information, political incentives persist that thwart cooperative efforts to inhibit global financial crimes.

This Article discusses the emergence of an international tax “war” and provides an overview of global digital taxation reform efforts. Governments have been unable to attain consensus surrounding how to tax cross-border digital transactions. As a result, dozens of governments are now pursuing uncoordinated reforms -- including digital services taxes, economic presence tests, withholding taxes and equalization levies -- that will encourage international double taxation and inhibit cross-border trade and investment. The global digital tax conflict masks a growing dissatisfaction with how to tax value associated with global transactions. Until this larger problem is unresolved, the war may continue unabated.

This chapter evaluates the recent OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative directed at global digital income, and concludes that tax planning will not be inhibited by any significant extent. Tax planners and academics nevertheless should take into account prospective reforms surrounding permanent establishments, hybrid entities, treaty shopping, transfer pricing and controlled foreign corporations, which may challenge certain practices.

The OECD and G20 Base Erosion and Profits (BEPS) project represents the most comprehensive global cooperative effort to date to inhibit aggressive international tax planning and offshore tax evasion along with related revenue losses. This cooperation promotes agreement on the underlying tax rules that govern cross-border transactions and reduces tax as a barrier to international trade and investment, hence improving global welfare. It remains unclear, however, whether ongoing cooperative solutions outside of tax administration will curtail perceived problems in any significant sense. Moreover, global political trends, including anti-globalization, nationalism, and populism along with the rise of countries historically left off the bargaining table make progress through international cooperation even more elusive. As a result of these forces, governments should continue to cooperate at the global level on tax administration agreements while simultaneously pursuing needed substantive tax and corporate law reforms at the national level.

This Comment reviews the 2018 Groia v. Law Society of Upper Canada decision by the Supreme Court of Canada. In this case, the Court held in favor of Mr. Groia, overturning two lower court decisions and two Law Society tribunal decisions. A central issue was when does incivility cross the line into professional misconduct worthy of sanction by a provincial or territorial law society. The Court held that, depending on the context, a lawyer's duty of resolute advocacy trumps the need for civil courtroom behavior. While the views of the majority of the Court are reasonable, the concurring decision by Justice Cote required greater scrutiny of a law society's decision to sanction courtroom behavior and would better protect judicial independence.

This Article was prepared for a symposium on 'What's Law Got Do To With It? Examining the Role of Law in a Changing World.' The OECD and G20 Base Erosion and Profits (BEPS) project represents the most comprehensive global cooperative effort to date to inhibit aggressive international tax planning and offshore tax evasion — along with related revenue losses. This cooperation promotes agreement on the underlying tax rules that govern cross-border transactions and reduces tax as a barrier to international trade and investment, hence improving global welfare. It remains unclear, however, whether ongoing cooperative solutions outside of tax administration will curtail perceived problems in any significant sense. Moreover, global political trends, including anti-globalization, nationalism, and populism — along with the rise of countries historically left off the bargaining table — make progress through international cooperation even more elusive. As a result of these forces, governments should continue to cooperate at the global level on tax administration agreements while simultaneously pursuing needed substantive tax and corporate law reforms at the national level.

This article highlights the influence of historical Anglo-American tax law developments on the formation of new political institutions and laws. In critical periods of English and U.S. history, individuals rebelled against arbitrary royal taxes. In turn, they demanded new tax laws that became embedded in documents from the Magna Carta to the English Bill of Rights to the Declaration of Independence that promoted democratic constraints on the use of state power to assess and collect taxes. Over time, the idea that individuals are entitled to equal treatment under the law, and possess inalienable human rights, emerged in part as a result of these tax law developments. The discussion in this article supports the view that pragmatic concerns over property and taxation drove important English and American political and legal reforms.  Arthur Cockfield is a Professor with Queen’s University Faculty of Law, Canada. The writing and research for this paper took place in part during the Spring 2013 semester when the author was a Fulbright Visiting Chair in Policy Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.   Jonah Mayles is a tax associate lawyer with Torkin Manes LLP in Toronto. An earlier draft of this article was presented as part of a tax history panel at the Annual Meeting for the Law and Society Association held in Baltimore. The authors are grateful for the many helpful comments they received. They also wish to thank Graeme Adams, JD candidate at Queen’s University Faculty of Law, for his helpful research assistance. 2013] THE INFLUENCE OF HISTORICAL TAX DEVELOPMENTS 41 ON ANGLO-AMERICAN LAWS AND POLITICS

This article reviews academic and government studies that assess the magnitude of Canadian offshore tax evasion, as well as what tax-haven data leaks such as the Panama papers have told us. This evidence, along with Canada's historically poor performance in auditing, investigating, and prosecuting offshore tax cheats, calls for an ongoing and measured legal and policy response to inhibit offshore tax evasion. The article evaluates recent Canadian reform efforts and recommends ways to improve the system for investigating and prosecuting offshore tax evaders.

The main purpose of International Taxation Core Concepts is to show managers, lawyers, accountants and others how tax laws affect global management decision-making. Part I of the book is a case study (or ‘tax novella’) called La Brienza Winery: Tax Trouble in Wine Country that illustrates how managers confront international tax challenges in the real world. It tells the story of Professor Xavier Montenegro and his tax advice to Dana La Brienza, the owner/manager of a Northern California winery with expanding global operations. Part II of the book contains additional materials on the U.S. and Canadian tax rules governing different cross-border planning strategies, including updates on recent developments. The second edition includes a new chapter on the developing relationship between Xavier and Dana. The attached excerpt provides the table of contents and the first chapter of La Brienza Winery.