Abstract Technological leaps in the algorithmic processing of information are providing financial actors with new opportunities for transnational financial and legal management that optimize asset allocation. Global professional service firms are actively developing TaxTech to capture this market. How will this transformation change relationships between suppliers, clients, and regulators? A key development is a move away from deliberate opacity for secrecy purposes into systems that search for the optimal exploitation of legal affordances. This signals a transformation of the assumed information asymmetries between suppliers, clients, and regulators that sits at the heart of the Global Wealth Chains framework. It empowers owners of data and code. Here we reflect on this transformation, considering three examples of how algorithmic technologies are being used for international tax purposes: blockchains for instant trade verification; generative AI for automation of tax compliance; and algorithmic scenario planning for tax avoidance. These examples show an important shift in the governance of wealth chains – the creation of new forms of infrastructural power through which algorithmic models may become central nodes in tax governance.
Seabrooke et al. (Mon,) studied this question.