Experience has taught us that there is a massive obstacle to people getting involved in taxation issues: simply understanding the very terms that accountants, lawyers, economists, bankers and financial advisers use when discussing tax. The seemingly impenetrable language of tax has served as an enormous obstacle to debate. In turn, this has made the discussion and policy-making of tax the preserve of specialised elites. The result is that decisions over some of the most important elements of civil society, economic policy and international development are dominated by elites, with ordinary people shut-out. This is not only frustrating for the lay enquirer - it is bad for society.
We can't simplify all the specialist language of tax. Like all specialist practise, some of it has a real use and simplification would lead to loss of meaning. Having said that, some of the language of tax is, we think, used to deliberately obscure the truth, and to keep outsiders out. Still more of it is straightforward bluff.
So what we can do is provide a glossary that explains the language of tax. That is, in fact, exactly what we have done. The result is (probably) one of the most comprehensive glossaries of tax ever published. It is certainly the largest one ever published that has as its intention the de-mystification of the tax lexicon on behalf of the non-specialist enquirer; a resource for all those who want to ensure that there is tax justice in our world but feel bamboozled by the arcane language of tax practitioners.
That said, despite our best efforts we will have missed out some terminology that needs explanation (quite possibly the most obvious stuff) and we will have failed in our objective to deliver clarity in every case. Sometimes there may be disagreement about our definitions. If any of these is the case please do contact us and tell us what the problem is. We can't guarantee to solve all issues, but we will certainly try.
In the meantime please note the glossary will work in two ways:
- You can download a PDF of the whole glossary (45 pages)
- There is an on line, searchable, version: See the entry 'Glossary'
