Leonard Seabrooke (Copenhagen Bus. Sch.) & Saila Stausholm (Copenhagen Bus. Sch.), How TaxTech Rewires Global Wealth Chains, Fin. & Soc’y (forthcoming 2026):
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.
From the conclusion:
Technology such as blockchains, generative AI and algorithms are transforming the logics of several markets and industries. In relation to taxation, GWC governance is being transformed from a cat and mouse game of hiding assets, into a game structured by the ability to use data and models strategically. This generates new inequalities between taxpayers, tax authorities, and tax advice suppliers, as their benefits or losses in this transformation depend on their success in the ‘arms race’ for TaxTech infrastructural power. . . .
Not all suppliers, clients, or regulators can necessarily develop their own technology, and the Big Four global accounting firms are well positioned to increase their infrastructural power over TaxTech devices and practices. . . .
On the one hand, the Big Four, as key suppliers, aim to use TaxTech to supercharge tax planning for their clients. On the other hand, regulators are also attempting to be first movers in some of these technologies. Their data is more structured, they have power over reporting formats, and clear incentives to apply technology to reduce fraud. TaxTech is beginning to rewire financial and legal management, concentrating power around those who can keep both their clients and regulators captive through technology.
