Search results for "tax reform"
showing 10 items of 25 documents
Value added taxes on electronic commerce: Obstacles to the EU Commission’s approach
2000
While e-commerce is developing tremendously fast, domestic politics and legislation labour to keep up with the dynamics of the new technology. Among other things, fiscal law is a particularly explosive area. Here, the current proposal of the EU Commission is to apply the already existing value added tax to e-commerce. By doing so, the Commission hopes to prevent the massive threatened shortfall in tax revenue. How is this approach of the Commission to be judged? Are there any alternatives?
Should all the world be taxed?
1997
Governments are beginning to fear that the establishment of the “information society” will cause their revenue from taxation to shrink: economic activities in the virtual world of the Internet could escape the application of value added tax. Are these fears justified? Would a “bit tax” solve the problem?
Tax Evasion and Tax Progressivity
2003
In a pure tax evasion framework in which the monetary penalty is a function of the evaded tax, more progressive income taxes will reduce tax evasion if income has to be declared. However, if tax payments have to be declared, higher tax progressivity will have no effects. Thus, the relationship between tax evasion and tax progressivity depends on whether income or taxes have to be divulged to tax authorities. If the fine is a function of undeclared income, higher tax progressivity will always raise evasion.
Tax evasion, tax progression, and efficiency wages
2004
Abstract More progressive taxes raise employment in imperfect labour markets. However, this prediction is not robust. For example, any employment effect vanishes in a constant profit efficiency wage economy. It is demonstrated that tax evasion opportunities can re-establish positive employment effects of higher tax progression.
Corporate hedging under a resource rent tax regime
2010
Accepted version of an article in the journal: Energy Economics. Published version available on Science Direct: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2009.10.009 In addition to the ordinary corporate income tax, special purpose taxes are sometimes levied to extract abnormal profits arising from the use of natural resources. Such dual tax regimes exist in Norway for oil and hydropower, where the corresponding special purpose tax bases are unaffected by any derivatives payments. Dual tax firms with hedging programs therefore face the risk of potentially large discrepancies between the tax bases for corporate income tax and special purpose tax. I investigate how this tax base asymmetry influences …
Tax Liability and Tax Evasion in a Competitive Labor Market
2005
In a competitive labor market, a change in the legal incidence of a tax on labor will not alter employment if tax obligations are fulfilled. However, this irrelevance result may no longer apply if taxes can be evaded. In particular, a shift from payroll to income taxes will lower employment. This will be the case if workers exhibit constant absolute risk aversion, have a utility function, which is strongly separable in income and the disutility from working, and the penalty for evasion is not proportional to the amount of taxes evaded. Accordingly, tax evasion opportunities can make the legal incidence of a tax on labor an important determinant of its economic incidence.
Perspectives of tax reforms in Croatia: expert opinion survey
2014
In order to shape tax reform it is necessary objectively to assess the current stateof-the- art of and of the outlook for the tax system. After having reviewed all previous reforms in the light of the consumption-based (interest- adjusted) concept of direct taxation, which was almost systematically implemented in Croatia in 1994, we present the results of a broad expert opinion survey about the Croatian tax system. The most interesting results suggest the maintenance/(re)introduction of different tax incentives and reduced VAT rates, rejection of a flat tax as well as decrease of tax brackets, an increase in alcohol and tobacco duties, the introduction of a financial activities tax, a furth…
Inequality Effects of Inflation: The 'Bracket Creep' Effect in the Spanish Income Tax System
2005
The aim of this research is to analyse how inflation induced erosions of the nominally defined items of the tax rules of the Spanish income tax system may change distributional and revenue generating properties of income taxes. We further investigate the effects of the tax reform carried out in 2003. Although the Spanish government claimed that this reform would reduce tax liabilities, this is not so clear as many argue that this reform only offset the effects of inflation suffered by the population since 1999. Using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) data set we aim to shed some light on the above issues through microsimulation techniques. Furthermore, we will also measure the i…
Corporate tax cuts and business-friendly policies in the UK - A review of electoral arguments during the 2015 legislative campaign
2016
The stance toward big business was a heated topic during Britain’s 2015 legislative campaign that led to the triumphal, albeit slightly unexpected, reelection of David Cameron, as Prime Minister. More profoundly, it raises the issue of the economic impact of corporate tax cuts and the nature of business-friendly policies in the UK. Firstly, we investigate the electoral arguments on both sides of the political spectrum. These discussions are framed within the overarching approach known as supply-side economics, which has been prevalent in English-speaking countries since the neoliberal revolution in the late 1970s. Secondly, we put forward the idea that widening inequalities, as suggested re…
Tax Design in the OECD: A Test of the Hines-Summers Hypothesis
2011
This paper investigates the effects of economic size and trade openness on tax design in the OECD. Using data for 30 OECD countries over the 1965–2007 period, we test the recently proposed Hines-Summers [2009] Hypothesis, according to which the smaller the size and the greater the openness of the economy, the more it will rely on expenditure taxes and the less on income taxes. Our findings show that the Hines-Summers Hypothesis can claim broad, statistically significant, and robust empirical support in the OECD data sets we examined.