The philosophical reflection on tax havens compels us to ask uncomfortable questions: What is law, if detached from Being or morality? What is justice, if indistinguishable from optimization? What is truth, if designed for control?
In Nietzschean terms, we live in an age where the strong create new legal orders for their own ends. In Heideggerian terms, we live in a world where law has become infrastructure—efficient, automated, but ontologically empty.
The tax haven is not the exception. It may well be the blueprint of the future. But if that is the case, then our task is not merely to reform tax policy but to reawaken the question of Being within law. We must resist the temptation to reduce legality to data and justice to utility.
To reclaim the law as a human and ethical endeavor, we must go beyond power and beyond enframing. We must ask again: What does it mean to be just? What does it mean to govern? What does it mean to be?
References / Bibliography
Nietzsche, F. (1886). Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. Vintage Books, 1966.
Heidegger, M. (1954). The Question Concerning Technology. In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. Harper & Row, 1977.
Apollo, Prof. Dr. (2025). The Tax Haven as Symptom: A Reflection Through Nietzsche and Heidegger. Lecture Module. Master of Accounting, Universitas Mercu Buana.
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Palan, R., Murphy, R., & Chavagneux, C. (2010). Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works. Cornell University Press.
Christensen, J. (2011). The Loophole Economy: Tax Havens and Economic Sovereignty. Critical Perspectives on International Business, 7(3), 280–299.
Picciotto, S. (1992). International Business Taxation: A Study in the Internationalization of Business Regulation. Cambridge University Press.
