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What is the relationship between taxation and public safety? Contrary to studies suggesting that personal victimization and heightened perceptions of insecurity increase pro-social attitudes and support for state intervention in the form of greater taxation, this article argues that such concerns decrease willingness to pay taxes to address public safety. It estimates what citizens are willing to pay to reduce crime, using an original representative survey conducted in Mexico and relying on the contingent valuation method to assess the value of nonmarket goods. Attitudes toward taxation are found to respond to subjective, sociotropic assessments of public safety rather than to actual risk or occurrences of individual victimization. These findings counter the conventional wisdom that demand for personal security enables greater extraction, a central proposition in classic accounts of state building. Showing that willingness to accept heavier taxation may be weakest among those who perceive the gravest need for security, the study adds precision to theories of fiscal exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between income inequality and redistributive policies? This question carries with it important implications for both scholars of comparative politics and for core political dynamics in contemporary world politics. We contend that the current literature fails to provide satisfactory answers. It generally does not acknowledge heterogeneity in the relationship between inequality and redistributive policies across space and time, nor does it use cross-nationally comparable data on government redistribution and income. In this note, we compare the relationship between inequality and redistribution over time, as well as among clusters of developed and less developed countries. We use a number of statistical models to address the complexity of the relationship.We find a positive, short-term association between inequality and redistribution, controlling for endogeneity between redistribution and market income inequality. We also find that, over the long term, inequality increases redistribution in developed democracies, but appears to decrease it in a number of developing nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presented paper focuses on measuring tax literacy among bachelor degree students at the University of Economics, Prague, along with analysis of the two factors that influence it. Based on the 150 collected questionnaires (63 % response rate), we measured tax literacy of students (personal income tax and VAT) and examined whether it depends on (i) previous passing of tax courses and (ii) previous practical experience with filing tax returns. More than half of the students were well to excellently-versed in tax matters, including those who have not completed any more advanced tax courses apart from the elementary tax course. For VAT, the results of statistical tests show that students' knowledge depends on passing a more advanced course on consumption taxation. On the other hand, the link between experience with tax returns and results of tax literacy tests cannot be unambiguously confirmed or rejected. Within the first statistical test (personal income tax), it was established that students' knowledge does not depend on previous filing of tax returns; the second test (value added tax) led to the opposite conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigate how the salience of alternatives influences the attention of a decision maker in a natural extension of the model of choice with limited attention by Masatlioglu et al. (Am Econ Rev 102(5):2183-2205, 2012). We propose positive salience effects on the attention of a decision maker. For example, when an alternative to which a consumer pays attention becomes more salient in terms of the extent of product advertisement, she will still pay attention to it in a market. We manipulate the salience of alternatives to find choice reversals from observable choice data, which play an important role in our analysis. The advantages of our model over the Masatlioglu et al. (Am Econ Rev 102(5):2183-2205, 2012) model are that it broadens the application of the model of choice with limited attention, and improves the power of inferring the decision maker's preference and the alternatives to which she pays attention and does not pay attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1480, the inhabitants of Beauvoir-sur-Mer and Bois-de Céné, two small towns on the Atlantic coast of Poitou, in France, rebelled against the officials in charge of collecting the salt tax and arrested some of them. Despite the fact that the resulting civil disturbance had few long-lasting consequences, the case is an effective illustration of the dynamics of rural revolts at the end of the fifteenth century. This article demonstrates how violence was only the last stage of protest against royal taxation; the riots had been preceded by legal resistance and negotiations. The article also shows how the events were permeated and fuelled by judicial complexity and a climate of legal uncertainty surrounding the rights of French officials to collect the tax. These revolts must then be understood not simply as a reaction to excessive taxation, but more as self-defence against royal officials who refused to acknowledge the rights of the inhabitants of these towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the issues of free-play tax deductions in the U.S. Topics discussed include analysis of the structure of gross gaming revenue taxes; an account of existing free-play tax policies in the country; and evaluation of tax policies in the light of social welfare, and patrons of the casinos.

Liberal welfare states tend to use more social tax expenditures (STEs) for the provision of social welfare benefits. These benefits are incorporated into tax legislations, which are usually considered neutral and especially gender-neutral. However, they can fail to consider some characteristics of the situation that women face and their role and, therefore, have the possibility to marginalize women and be an obstacle to gender equality. By conducting a historical discourse analysis in Canada (1967-2012), this article shows that the tax policy discourse in relation to STEs is not gender-neutral. In constructing STEs, various assumptions are made about women and their role in society: they are housewives, workers, or to be eventually completely evacuated from the discourse to the profit of children and the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the social and economic conditions of New Orleans, Louisiana and comments on the city's tax system. It notes the high rates of poverty experienced by its residents, especially children and minority communities, food insecurity, and wage gap between women and male employees. It talks about the role of the tax structure in contributing to the issues. Information on the efforts of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services (SLLS) to assist low-income taxpayers is also presented.

Some commentators have lamented that the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is undertheorized--that its purpose is unclear--and that its design is therefore suboptimal. This Note explores the credit's path-dependent past, which has resulted in a present-day EITC that manifests a diverse, uncoordinated assortment of policy purposes. Although the EITC's ambiguity of purpose may yield policy inefficiencies, this Note argues that it also produces significant political benefits that would-be reformers who value the EITC's many societal benefits should take into account before they attempt to enact any major overhaul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framing tax increases as frequent purchases appears to be a popular message strategy to generate donations and elicit support for policies. We test whether this strategy is effective at obtaining support for tax increases through two survey experiments. Results demonstrate that this message strategy—framing tax increases in terms of items—is more effective than stating the increase in terms of a yearly or weekly amount. This strategy appears to be effective when the amount of a tax increase is framed as a hedonic item and appears to be particularly effective as the tax amount requested increases and among those uninvolved with the issue under consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fiscal sociology has alleged the existence of a mutually reinforcing effect between the emergence of representative government and effective taxation. This paper looks at Benin, a low-income country that successfully democratised in the early 1990s. It finds that Benin appears to have reinforced its extractive capacities since democratisation. However, the effect of democratisation has been indirect, while the influence of the International Financial Institutions (IFI) and the size of the country's informal sector have played a more direct role. Nevertheless, the hypothesis that effective taxation is based on a quasi-consensual relationship between the state and the taxpayers finds some confirmation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on the history of taxation and the fairness of taxes for those whom it is levied upon. It offers an overview of government taxes and the extent to which they are justified, the taxation system of the Roman empire and the tax proposed by British prime minister William Pitt to fight the war against Napoleon. The author also discusses the income tax adopted by the U.S. to fight the civil war.

Introduced in the late 1990s, tax credits grew under successive Labour governments to become a cornerstone of UK social policy. Distinguished from traditional welfare policies by their target group and their mode of administration, and with goals that appeared capable of commanding support across the ideological spectrum, tax credits until recently seemed to hold the key to tackling poverty in a politically popular manner. But since 2010 the tax credit system has been systematically dismantled, initially qualitatively and latterly also quantitatively. This paper discusses the multiple factors that help to explain the rapid fall from grace in the UK of this liberal approach to supporting the incomes of poor working households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a formal model of international bargaining between two states in which one government must negotiate with a domestic opposition faction to secure tax revenue for military spending. The model examines how robust the international order is to domestic political crises that activate a stark trade-off to a governing coalition. Namely, offering fiscal relief to stave off domestic revolution can simultaneously undermine the larger international political order by facilitating military spending that can, under some circumstances, result in sizable shifts in the relative distribution of military power between states. We find that two key domestic conditions influence the likelihood of preventive war: the distribution of income within the state's economy and the relative economic stake that opposition groups possess in international settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that human rights could be improved by motivating politicians and bureaucrats to put more effort into protecting human rights. It conceptualizes the production of human rights practices as the outcome of two principal-agent relationships that constrain politicians and bureaucrats. Reliance on taxes is a non-electoral, fiscal factor that makes politicians more willing to protect human rights. Increased government revenue, no matter the source, raises bureaucratic compensation and helps create a more accountable bureaucracy. Thus both a higher reliance on taxes and larger state revenues lead to the better protection of human rights. Each fiscal factor promotes a different type of accountability, both of which independently contribute to good human rights practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article tackles the problem of tax evasion from a sociological view. The rational action approach is integrated here with the concepts of trust and tax morale. The aim is to discover why people justify fiscal fraud or have lax tax morale. The main hypothesis maintained here is that tax system social factors--such as trust--have an effect on the justification of fraud. Using two survey datasets referred to the past ten years, we observe that tax morale seems to be mainly composed by trust in tax system, trust in other taxpayers as well as diverse contextual factors. Finally, I present an interpretive framework that takes into consideration individual factors as well as social and geographic dimensions of tax evasion in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tackles the problem of tax evasion from a sociological view. The rational action approach is integrated here with the concepts of trust and tax morale. The aim is to discover why people justify fiscal fraud or have lax tax morale. The main hypothesis maintained here is that tax system social factors--such as trust--have an effect on the justification of fraud. Using two survey datasets referred to the past ten years, we observe that tax morale seems to be mainly composed by trust in tax system, trust in other taxpayers as well as diverse contextual factors. Finally, I present an interpretive framework that takes into consideration individual factors as well as social and geographic dimensions of tax evasion in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does redistributive policy affect the survival of authoritarian regimes? I argue that redistributive policy in favor of cities, while temporarily reducing urban grievances, in the long-run undermines regime survival by inducing urban concentration. I test the argument using cross-national city population, urban bias, and nondemocratic regime survival data in the post-WWII period. The results show that urban concentration is dangerous for dictators principally by promoting collective action, that urban bias induces urban concentration, and that urban bias represents a Faustian bargain with short-term benefits overwhelmed by long-term costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which discusses East Indians' passive resistance, or Satyagraha, strike at coals mines in Natal Midlands, South Africa in 1913, including the leadership role that the East Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi played in this regard. The relationship between the coal mine industry employers and the South African government is discussed. An overview of the role that a discriminatory tax on East Indian workers played in the coal miners' strike is provided.

Political debates over knowledge claims often become emotionally charged, with two sides not only disputing what is true but seeing those on the other side as deluded or worse. By looking at use of the term 'Laffer curve' in the U.S. Congress from 1977 to 2010, we draw attention to two ways such debates over knowledge claims can evolve. The Laffer curve is a simple schematic representation of the relationship between tax rates and government revenue that was influential in U.S. tax policy in the late 1970s. Early on, Republicans and Democrats faced off over the Laffer curve as a cognitive symbol to be debated with argument, evidence, and reference to experts. Over time, Republicans continued to treat the Laffer curve as a cognitive symbol, but for Democrats it became a polluted expressive symbol that could be dismissed without debate. Democrats also articulated the Laffer curve as part of an ironic narrative about the failure of the Reagan administration, which ended the possibility of serious deliberation. We suggest that the dynamics seen here may also be present around other politicized knowledge claims, such as the claim that human activity is causing climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the authors' view on taxpayers and tax spenders in the U.S. They provide an analysis on the relationship between them who pay taxes and receive federally funded benefits respectively as well as their involvement in the deficit explosion in the country. They note concerns over the demand for federal benefits with zero tax prices despite being funded by shortages. They also point out a refutable hypotheses involving the distribution of tax liability as well as trends in government spending, debt and transfer payments in connection with changes in such dispersion.

The article explores the history of indigenous political institutions and tax administration in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Emphasis is given to the double taxation of rural communities by both indigenous authorities and the national government and how that impacts economic growth and social change. Other topics include the labor mobilization of agricultural workers, levies paid under white rule, and constitutional authority.

The article looks at property taxes in the Kingdom of Hawai'i during the 19th century. According to the author, changes in the country's tax laws reflected social, legal, and economic changes in Hawaiian society and helped to create further changes. Details on the relationship between the early Hawaiian form of property taxes known as ho'okupu and Western tax systems are presented. It is suggested that Hawaiian traditions were incorporated into some Western forms of taxation in the Kingdom. Other topics include monarchy, tribute, capitalism, and missionary William Richards.

Los índices de Kakwani y Reynolds-Smolensky se emplean para analizar las consecuencias de las reformas fiscales en la progresividad y capacidad redistributiva de los impuestos. No obstante, su interpretación en términos normativos solo resulta pertinente en reformas en que la recaudación permanece constante. Dado que este no suele ser el caso en las reformas reales, es habitual descomponer el índice de Reynolds-Smolensky en cambios en la tasa media del impuesto y cambios en el índice de Kakwani. En este trabajo se intenta mostrar que esta descomposición presenta serios inconvenientes, que se agravan en países de bajos ingresos tributarios. Para contribuir a la solución de estos problemas se propone una serie de indicadores alternativos basados en los índices tradicionales, que permiten analizar los efectos en la redistribución y progresividad en reformas con variaciones en la recaudación. Mediante estos indicadores se examinan hipotéticas reformas en el impuesto sobre la renta de Guatemala. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the recent economic recession Ireland had become one of the most affluent societies in the world, and the so-called Irish social model of low taxes and low public services provision was seen as one to be emulated, particularly amongst the accession states to the EU. However, Ireland has also become one of the most unequal societies in the OECD, and one of the unhealthiest, measured by all of the standard morbidity and epidemiological indicators, and the social gradient of health corresponds closely with social inequality. Ireland's healthcare system, always relatively underdeveloped in comparison to most European countries, reflects social inequality; it is a two-tiered system wherein a minority with private health insurance enjoy access to good care and facilities, while the rest make do with an underdeveloped, under-resourced and overstretched public health system and subsidise the private services. The Irish social model is schizmogenic, generating and amplifying social inequalities. This is clearly visible in the domain of health, which has become a crucible of public de-legitimation and political foment. Ireland's problems are problems for the health and well-being of the European body politic, insofar as other members emulate the Irish model, cutting corporate taxes and reducing public services in a race to the bottom away from the Rhinish and Nordic social models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 2005 Presidential Advisory Panel on Tax Reform proposed a family credit and a work credit to replace some current tax credits, deductions, and exemptions. Taxes are overlooked by many social workers as a policy instrument for increasing the disposable income of low- and moderate-income families. This paper analyzes the proposed new credits through a justice framework. Social justice often is defined as the equitable distribution of societal resources. This definition reflects one type of justice--Rawls's egalitarian philosophy. A more nuanced understanding of justice may enable coalition building in policy making, leading to the enactment of tax policy that helps families pay for their basic needs--a goal of both direct service and policy practice social work practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author counters the popularly held scholarly view that Russia underwent a systemic crisis at the turn of the 19th century which led to its revolutions in 1917. He uses demographic and economic data to argue that Russia was actually experiencing a period of economic growth after the Great Reforms and that the universal crisis idea was created for ideological justification for Russia's revolutions in the early twentieth century. The author examines several factors including the peasantry's quality of life, the effect of the abolition of serfdom, the tax load on the peasantry and the improvement of the United Nation's Human Development Index for Russia in the period from 1861 to 1913.

This article considers the development of two features of central Italian society in the post-Roman period (approximately the mid-fifth to the mid-ninth centuries) that have been thought to have affected significantly the condition of life of the peasantry there: rural settlement and the taxation system. It argues that we should be wary of attempting to reconstruct the settlement landscape from the surviving documents: too often, references to agrarian structures are misconstrued as references to settlements. The shape of the latter is rarely visible in the textual evidence, but can be appreciated far more certainly from archaeological surveys and excavations, which present a picture of the evolution of the human landscape that is far more varied than a simple transition ‘from villa to village’. Documentary sources are more helpful in tracing the fate of the Roman taxation system. They point to structural continuities in the way that the peasantry was exploited that did not significantly vary between neighbouring political territories, and that reveal how the powerful continued to affect both the location and the condition of peasant life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a puzzle over why inheritance taxes are unpopular relative to other taxes since they are progressive and, assuming they are spent wisely on welfare goods, more people should gain than lose through inheritance tax. I examine four reasons why inheritance tax might be unpopular (a) propaganda, (b) fiscal illusion, (c) framing and developing the latter (d) an evolutionary basis in human reasoning. The latter suggests that the relative popularity of a tax is related to how far the money taxed is already ‘in the possession’ of the person taxed. Given these reasons I make a suggestion and examine some proposal for making inheritance tax less unpopular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims The aim of this paper is to study short-term changes in alcohol consumption by subgroups of the population in Denmark, Finland and southern Sweden following large-scale decreases in alcohol taxation in Denmark and Finland and large increases in travellers' allowances in Finland and Sweden. Design General population random samples surveyed before and after the changes, using northern Sweden as a control site. Setting Denmark, Finland, southern Sweden and northern Sweden. Participants Respondents aged 16–69 years. Measurements Volume of drinking is the main measure reported. Changes are examined by gender, age, income and year 2003 consumption level. Results Consumption decreased or remained the same among women and men in all three study sites. Relative changes were similar across subgroups of age, gender and income in all countries. In absolute terms, there was a consistent differential change by age in Denmark, Finland and Southern Sweden, with the higher level of the young and lower level of the old converging. Women's and men's consumption converged in Finland and southern Sweden. The changes did not differ systematically by income. Changes were not larger among heavier drinkers. Conclusions The results did not confirm expectations: an increase in consumption larger than that in the control site could not be shown in any of the countries or subgroups of the population. If there has been an effect – as shown in aggregate data in Finland – it seems to have been stronger among the old than the young and, in Finland and southern Sweden, among women rather than men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on welfare dependency in Anglo countries. Levels of benefits funded by high levels of personal taxation; Importance of national cultures; Discussions on welfare reform and individualism.

Compares the anti-poverty effectiveness of taxes and income transfers among Western welfare states. Decomposition of poverty outcome into the level of market-generated poverty, the overall level of welfare efforts and the poverty reduction efficiency of taxes and transfers; Finding that the extents of poverty differ widely across welfare states; Impact of level of redistributional efforts.

Discusses the legislative proposal to grant a per-child tax credit in the United States. Recommendations of the bill; Comparison to other pronatalist policies in other countries; Effect of tax structure on fertility.

Argues the use of the Tax Code to contribute to the stability of marriages with children. Vital stake of society on marriage because of its effect on children; Question whether it is appropriate for government to attempt to foster stable marriages; How tax relief promote stable marriages.

In light of the growing federal deficit, pressure is mounting to cut federal spending. If the budget for social security programs is cut who will suffer? This article presents the results of a study that investigated the degree to which taxes and public income transfers change the level of income, the degree of inequality in income distribution, and the poverty rates of various demographic groups. Major findings are that public income transfers are more powerful than taxes in equalizing the income distribution and that poverty reduction through non-means-tested transfer programs is more effective among elderly people, white people, and people in married-couple families, whereas poverty reduction through means-tested transfer programs is more effective among nonelderly people, black people, and people in female-headed families. Implications for social work practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact on interstate net migration of differential state and local property tax and transfer policies in the United States by race, age and sex for 1965-70. The results offer considerable support to the Tiebout hypothesis that the consumer-voter moves to that area which best satisfies his preferences for public goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent developments in "fiscal sociology" (i.e. the sociological analysis of taxation and public finances), few efforts have been made to synthesize scholarly developments in the field. This is particularly surprising because much of the literature on the determinants of taxation bears directly on the debates in political sociology about the social, political, institutional, and other determinants of government policy. This essay reviews and integrates the literature on tax policy formation and relates it to, these general debates. It also explores some of the important but often neglected effects that taxation has on such phenomena as political revolution, state building, economic organization, labor force participation, and philanthropy. Thus, this essay demonstrates the significance and reviews recent developments in fiscal sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]