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In the wake of the euro area crisis, the debate on instruments to deepen economic integration among its members has intensified, among others putting forward a fiscal stabilization capacity for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) members. Contributions made so far to further this idea have mostly concentrated on the expenditure side and possible stabilization properties. This analysis reviews the most important proposals and discusses design choices and institutional conditions to develop the revenue side of such a fiscal instrument.

The threat generated by obesity is increasing in terms of health of both individuals and society day by day. States are using different tools in fighting against this threat. One of these tools is taxing obesity. In fighting against obesity, in order to protect health, while there are tax proposals and practices in different names and subjects, Obesity Tax" is used as a generic name. We conducted a field questionnaire study applied all around Turkey, in order to measure the public opinion related with "Obesity Tax" that probably would be applied in Turkey. In this paper it is determined that public believe the necessity of fighting obesity; however, this struggle must be based on non-tax instruments because they have concern the tax might be applied for the fiscal purposes. According to results of the study, we offer specifically to the policy makers that regulative, public supported, efficient and unique “Obesity Tax” must be implemented, but, such tax revenues must be spent for fighting against obesity or subsidies for healthy products.

In the past four years, Chinese tourists’ consumption in Taiwan has contributed to the Taiwanese economy. However, there is a limited literature documenting the actual tax effects under the aviation deregulation. Based on the models established by Leontief (1966) and Miyazawa (2002) and by adding the effective tax rate, which is employed by the Japan National Tourism Organization (2010), the present study measures the indirect tax, the personal income tax, and the corporate income tax resulting from the change in the transport policy. This allows us to get better understanding the tax effects of the change in a transport policy. The empirical results show that the total tax revenue of the aviation deregulation generated for US$1,047.3164 million, equivalent to the total tax revenue of 1.78% in 2011 in a small open economy. The indirect tax revenue, the personal income tax revenue and the corporate income tax revenue accounted for 0.76%, 0.81%, 0.21%, respectively. As for the industrial sector, the tax revenue from the service-related industry is US$939.7126 million, which accounts for up to 89.73% of the total tax revenue under the aviation deregulation.

Globalized economy has brought about many economic and political problems in both national and international fields. One of the most significant results of globalization is that it has removed boundaries and reduced time and space related costs preventing international capital from moving towards areas where it can increase its value. This change, which is positive considering revaluation and profit increase in global capital, has caused normlessness and led to a process blocking international competition, which may most of the time result in national and international economic crises. Countries have, thus, started to introduce tax policies that would attract global capital. This problem has conceptually been handled in fiscal literature as international tax competition. Recently its harmful aspects have also been included in the discussions. In this context, national authorities as well as international institutions such as European Union and OECD have been working on projects to prevent harmful tax competition. Yet, globalization and financialization of economy have made countries more dependent on international capital. It is conflicting that countries are making new regulations to prevent harmful tax competitions while they are also creating an environment where they can promote global capital to avoid possible financial crises. This conflict was clearly observed in European Union during the 2008 global crisis. This study reveals the conflict between tax policies applied by EU to overcome the 2008 global financial crisis and the works intended for preventing harmful tax competition in EU.

Since its independence the Republic of Croatia has commenced a thorough reconstruction of its taxation system according to the market economy taxation policy. Essential taxation reforms have brought the system closer to EU systems i.e. it has been being harmonized with taxation systems of developed European countries. The tax systems of modern countries are using a large number of tax forms, which differs from country to country. The Republic of Croatia has adopted solutions that are used by the majority of European countries. Current tax system of the Republic of Croatia can be viewed through three fiscal levels, but this paper deals with revenue, especially tax revenue of local and regional self-government units. The paper will present importance and a way of collecting revenue, especially tax revenue and satisfying public needs in terms of counties, cities and municipalities.

The need for tax revenue is increasing day after day, state needs to raise its service quality in order not to lose the tax payers, but to gain them. Especially the tax officers and their chiefs who are in direct relationship with the tax payer should have good relations with all taxpayers, empathize with the taxpayer, treat equally to each taxpayer and motivate the taxpayers regarding conformity with the taxes. In this study, a survey was conducted among the tax officers employed in the Revenue Administration of Canakkale and Istanbul, and from the perspective of them, a correlation analysis of the relations between the taxpayer, the tax officer and the chief of the tax officers, was carried out with statistical techniques including Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis H test.

Within the context of the fixed-effects model, this study uses a2002-2007state-levelpanel dataset of the United States to investigate the relative effectiveness of real (constant-dollar) federal cigarette excise taxation versus real (constant-dollar) state cigarette excise taxation in reducing cigarette smoking in the United States. The empirical estimates in this study find that each of two aggregate measures of the extent of cigarette smoking, namely, the number of packs of cigarettes smoked per capita annually and the percentage of the population classified as smokers, is a decreasing function of both the federal cigarette excise tax and the state cigarette excise tax. However, it is also found that a given percentage increase in there all federal excise tax has a much greater negative impact on both the number of packs of cigarettes smoked per capita annually and the magnitude of the percentage of the population classified as smokers than does an equal percentage increase in the real state cigarette excise tax.

In the article there are worked out a characterization and a definition of internal financial control. There is clarified the need for carrying out this kind of financial control and are considered the reasons for which there is developed a system of internal financial control in the enterprise. There is presented the possibility for assessment of the established system of internal financial control in the enterprises as an innovative means of raising the efficiency of tax control. With regard to this, from auditing practice there have been borrowed and adapted - for the needs of tax control - the guidelines and the criteria for the assessment of the system of internal financial control in the enterprises.

It has been recently recognized that there is difference of preference between smokers and non-smokers. That is, smokers tend to be more impatient and prefer immediate benefits compared with non-smokers. If people follow their primitive instincts they will engage in sexual behavior. Hence, impatient people are more likely to have sex because it is difficult for them to control their instincts. However, for married people, having sex with a spouse is considered to be an investment in family life to ensure a good marital relationship. Therefore, sex with a spouse is considered to result in a long-term benefit, rather than an immediate benefit. This paper used individual-level data from Japan to investigate how sexual behavior differs between smokers and non-smokers. After controlling for various individual characteristics, the important findings are as follows. (1) Frequency of sex is positively associated with family satisfaction; (2) unmarried smokers are more likely to have sex than unmarried non-smokers; and (3) married smokers are less likely to have sex than married non-smokers. These findings regarding smokers’ sexual behavior are congruent with the characteristics of smokers suggested in existing literature.

In diesem Beitrag wird dargelegt, dass von den derzeitigen vier gewichtigen den Kommunen zufließenden Steuern (Grund- und Gewerbesteuer sowie kommunaler Anteil an der Einkommen- und Umsatzsteuer) die Grundsteuer am besten die an eine kommunale Steuer zu stellenden Anforderungskriterien erfüllt. Insofern sollte der Anteil der Grundsteuer am kommunalen Steueraufkommen erhöht werden, etwa auf Kosten der Gewerbesteuer. Hingegen hat sich gezeigt, dass eine verteilungspolitische Instrumentalisierung der Grundsteuer nicht unproblematisch ist. Erst bei Verwendung von Freibeträgen und damit einer Abkehr vom Realsteuercharakter wäre die Grundsteuer als verteilungspolitisches Instrument einsetzbar. Allerdings würde der Freibetrag zu einer deutlichen Minderung der Bemessungsgrundlage führen. Dieser Umstand würde - allein zur Wahrung der Aufkommensneutralität - zu Steigerungen der Grundsteuerhebesätze führen, die aus politischer Sicht unakzeptabel sein dürften. Insofern ist die Grundsteuer für die Umverteilung weniger gut geeignet. German municipalities receive almost all of their tax revenue from four different taxes: real property tax, trade tax and shares of value added tax and income tax. Compared with the three latter taxes, real property tax meets the requirements of a rational local tax system in the best way. For that reason tax revenue from the real property tax should be increased and the one of the trade tax should be decreased. This paper analyses furthermore weather the real property tax is useful for redistribution of wealth. On the one hand without a change to a progressive tax schedule the real property tax is no instrument for redistribution. On the other hand a tax allowance will increase the tax burden of the remaining tax payers very strong to keep the tax revenue on the same level as before. This could be a problem for politicians, which want to be re-elected. Thus real property tax is no instrument for redistribution of wealth.

The purpose of this paper is to study empirically how democracy, taxation and economic freedom interact within the European Union (EU-27), european old member states (EU-15) and european new member states (EU-NMS), using VAR methodology, with panel data for 24 countries and yearly observations for the period 1995-2008. The main findings show for EU-27 that democracy amplifies the level of taxation and it discourages economic freedom, while economic freedom has an almost unsignificant, but positive effect on the level of taxation, and a small, positive effect on democracy. As for EU 15, taxation and economic freedom seem to discourage each other; finally, in the case of EU-NMS, the results are similar to EU-27. In respect to policy implication, governments should protect and support private property and initiative, the only ones able to provide functionality for the market’s "invisible hand".

The paper analyses the relationship between accounting and taxation in the Romanian accounting environment. In this respect the paper illustrates the results of the main research conducted in the national and international literature in terms of the relationship between accounting and taxation in Romania and also the main research directions in terms of tax-accounting link. The paper concludes that the level of influence was decreased over time (de jure and de facto) as a result of changes made in the Romanian accounting and tax environment.

We built a general equilibrium endogenous growth model in which final goods are produced either in the relatively skilled-labour intensive exports sector or in the relatively unskilled-labour intensive domestic sector. We show that, by affecting the technological-knowledge bias, subsidies explain the simultaneous rise in the exports sector, the skill wage premium and the economic growth rate. Then, to shed light upon the causal nexus between production-related subsidies and exports, we use a Portuguese longitudinal database (1996–2003) and implement a propensity score matching approach. Empirical results seem to prove the theoretical predictions: subsidies generate the rise in the wage premium of exporters and the increase in the relative size of export sector, even if no impact of subsidies is found in the capacity of transforming domestic firms into new exporters.

Tax administration having as general objectives fighting against tax evasion, business support, modernization and improvement of procedures, prevention of tax evasion during collection, improving the collection of budgetary debts wants to be a modern administration that rely on principles of efficiency, transparency and responsibility. How the objectives of tax administration are known? Does everyone understand the objectives of tax administration? Do taxpayers know that major strategic orientation of the tax administration is the attention to expectations of citizens and businesses? What are the actions that can improve and stimulate the relationship taxpayer – tax administration? Through this article we intend to present a number of aspects of marketing policy that can be implemented by the institutions with attributions in tax administration to promote the image among taxpayers and thus provide the answer to the above questions.

Pakistan faces economic challenges in the summer of 2011 with regard to its balance of payments and its public finances, resulting primarily from the suspension of an ongoing International Monetary Fund (IMF) program, the associated cessation of program lending by other multilateral financial institutions, and the termination of the US's cash logistics support. This paper argues that these challenges can be met without resorting to a new program with the IMF. The policy measures recommended with regard to the balance of payments are: (i) to allow the orderly depreciation of the exchange rate in the foreign exchange interbank market by about 5-15 percent or to PKR90-100/US dollar, (ii) to impose import surcharges of 10-20 percent on nonessential imports, and (iii) to re-impose measures originally imposed to increase the cost of import letters of credit. Public finance-related policy measures recommended on the expenditure side are: (i) to gradually reduce the State Bank of Pakistan's policy rate by 300 basis points in the fiscal year (FY) 2012 from its present level of 13.5 percent, thereby reducing the interest burden on public debt; and (ii) to utilize these savings to restart the stalled public sector infrastructure development program. These measures will also stimulate economic activity. On tax policy, the paper recommends that: (i) the sales tax rate be increased from its present 16 percent to 18 percent, (ii) custom duties be increased by 10-20 percent on nonessential imports (as also recommended for the balance of payments, and (iii) regulatory and excise duties be increased and their original (FY2011) coverage restored. Keywords: Economic Policy, Balance of Payments, Public Finance, Pakistan. JEL Classification: H29, G18. 1. Introduction Pakistan entered into an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program in late 2008 as its foreign exchange reserves depleted as a result of economic adventurism during 2004-08 by its economic managers. The IMF program was generally implemented during 2009 and 2010 but finally suspended in the summer of 2011, which was also notable in that the US cut off its cash logistics support program (roughly USD1 billion per annum) to Pakistan. These twin events followed in the wake of exceptional floods in the summer of 2010, which displaced about 20 million people, and caused a loss in infrastructure estimated at about USD10 billion and an income loss estimated at about 2-3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). As a result, Pakistanis are generally concerned about the future direction of the economy and particularly the policy options available to them. This paper aims to address some of these issues. 2. Economic Fundamentals Pakistan, with an area of 877,365 square kilometers; a population of 175 million; more than a dozen urban centers of more than 1 million people (Karachi, 12 million; Lahore, 7 million); large agricultural areas (in excess of 50 million acres); and possessing a sophisticated industrial, scientific, and financial infrastructure is easily a significant political, economic, and social entity on the world scene. As Table 1 below indicates, the country's current GDP is about USD235 billion at current market prices (probably about USD500 billion at purchasing power parity [PPP] prices) and its per capita income about USD1,400 (USD3,000 at PPP prices). It is also a large and flourishing democracy with a fiercely independent media and judiciary. An economy and society of this size and sophistication should be able to manage its current economic problems, which essentially stem from a low growth rate/high interest rate syndrome imposed by the IMF, and an apparent financial squeeze imposed by other multilateral financial institutions (the World Bank and Asian Development Bank) after the breakdown of the agreement with the IMF. 3. Balance of Payments Consequent to the boom-and-bust policies followed by Pakistan in the 1980s and early 1990s, essentially involving in each case a balance of payments crisis and subsequent recourse to the IMF, Pakistan moved to institute an orderly market-determined exchange rate. …

Due to the mixed empirical evidence bearing on the economic determinants, beliefs have been at the centre of attention of research into preferences for income redistribution. We elicit preferences for income redistribution through a Discrete Choice Experiment performed in 2008 in Switzerland and relate them to several behavioural determinants, in particular to religious beliefs. Estimated marginal willingness to pay (WTP) is positive among those who do not belong to a religious denomination, and negative otherwise. However, the marginal WTP is shown to increase with a higher degree of religiosity. Moreover, those who state that luck or connections play a crucial role in determining economic success exhibit significantly higher WTP values than those who deem effort to be decisive. (JEL codes: C35, C93, D63, H29) Copyright The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Ifo Institute for Economic Research, Munich. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Bu calisma milli gelir hesaplari ve vergi hasilati istatistiklerini kullanarak Mendoza vd. (1994) ile Carey ve Rabesona (2002)’nin gelistirdigi yontemlerden hareketle Turkiye ekonomisi icin 1980–2006 donemi itibariyle, tuketim, hanehalki geliri, isgucu geliri ve sermaye geliri uzerindeki efektif vergi oranlarinin hesaplanmasini amaclamistir. Mendoza – Razin - Tesar ve Carey - Rabesona yonteminin sosyal guvenlik katkilarinin indirilemedigi ve indirilebildigi duruma gore elde edilmis hesaplama sonuclari, vergi kompozisyonundaki agirligin dolayli vergilere kaymasinin etkisiyle tuketim uzerindeki vergi yukunun ilgili donemde yukselme egiliminde, hanehalki geliri uzerindeki vergi yukunun de dusme egiliminde oldugunu vurgulamaktadir. Diger yandan soz konusu sonuclar hem isgucu hem de sermaye geliri uzerindeki efektif vergi oranlarinin artma egiliminde oldugunu, calisanlar uzerindeki vergi yukunu temsil eden, isgucu geliri uzerindeki efektif vergi oraninin sermaye geliri uzerindeki efektif vergi oranindan yuksekte seyrettigini gostermektedir.

It is known that in 2010, the art. 11 para. 2 of the Tax Code was amended as to extend the application of regulations concerning transfer pricing on the transactions between the Romanian affiliated persons. As a consequence, a significant increase in the number of tax inspections has been observed between 2010-2011, that has aimed to investigate the transfer pricing charged by companies in the relations with the affiliated persons, both non- resident and Romanian persons.It has been found out of these tax inspections that it is difficult to put into practice the set of regulations regarding the transfer pricing, both taxpayers and tax inspectors being inexperienced in this field.

The study conducted a longitudinal analysis regarding Romanian profit tax regulations. Beginning with the first profit tax regulation implemented in 1991 and until now, we analyzed based on a empirical approach all changes that have occurred over time in the Romanian accounting environment. The motivation of the study conducted was based on the strong relationship between accounting and taxation in the Romanian accounting environment over time, the profit tax being one of the main items of this relation. This particular study is divided into five sections. After a short introduction and presenting the motivation of the study (section 1), in section 2 we conducted the literature review based on international and national studies regarding the profit tax regulations through the relationship between accounting and taxation. Section 3 presents a brief review of the main Romanian regulations that concerned the profit tax and the most important changes that have occurred over time. In section 4 we conducted the empirical analysis. In this section is realized a series of analysis, aiming the following: (1) the total number of regulations that have amend the main regulations presented in the previous section; (2) the type of amendments implemented over regulations (abolishment, text amendment, adding new articles or alignments); (3) the total number of amendments approved by law without modifications, respectively the total number of amendments approved on the Official Journal through Government Ordinance or Emergency Ordinance and unapproved by law. The empirical analysis conducted documented that the main shortcoming associated with the profit tax regulation is due by the multiple changes which have been subject of the 5 main profit tax regulations. The last section (section 5) consists in presenting the conclusions of the study. As main conclusion, the profit tax regulation is stable only in terms of the small number of main regulations, the large number of amendments creating difficulties in the understanding and application by practitioners.

This paper analyses the international literature regarding the relationship between accounting and taxation in the last 20 years. To this purspose we reviewed the 3 international economic databases (EMERALD, EBSCO and SCIENCE DIRECT). We have found various studies approaching this relationship, the main research being performed due to the differences between them in the accounting systems that govern the world countries.

Whomever paid for the Mars trip (and related preparations) will get to determine who will govern Mars, and how? Or, will that be the case? For example, on what principles of governance? Is it going to be a democracy (whatever that may have meant), dictatorship of spacesuits, or inmates of the bubble abodes? Besides, will the payment be entirely in monetary terms? Who paid for the Glorious Revolution (1688)? American Revolution (1776)? French Revolution (1789)? Russian Revolution (which one?)? And a number of similarly momentous ones, some much older that those listed above?

Kuresellesme sureci ve farkli kultur carpismalarinin yogun bicimde yasandigi, ozellikle de ekonomik butunlesmelerin gundemde oldugu gunumuzde vergi kulturu, ekonomi ve kamu maliyesi acisindan oldukca populer ve onemli bir konudur. Aslinda vergi kulturu dogrudan ekonomi ve kamu maliyesini ilgilendirse de vergi kulturu konusu iktisat, sosyoloji ve tarih olmak uzere diger bilim dallarinin kesisimin de yer almaktadir. Vergi kulturu hakkinda calisan iktisatci gruplar kendi icinde bir takim farkliliklara ayrilmaktadir. Bu goruslerden on onemlileri klasik gorus ve donusum iktisatcilarinin savundugu modern gorustur. Mukellef ve idarenin basrolde oynadigi vergi oyunu icerisinde cevresel aktorler ve mevzuata iliskin duzenlemeler vergi oyununun kurallarini ortaya koymaktadir. Bu oyunun aktorleri ise, siyasetciler, vergi mukellefleri, vergi memurlari, uzmanlar ve mali musavirler ile bu konuda calisan akademisyenlerdir. Bu oyun surecinde soz konusu aktorler arasinda arasindaki etkilesim ve bu etkilesimin yonu sosyal bagimlilik ya da bir baga donusmekte ve vergi oyunu mevzuat sinirlamasi altinda bir kultur olgusuna donusmektedir. Bu calisma soz konusu kultur olgusundan hareketle vergi kulturu literaturune ve spesifik ulke ornekleri uzerine yogunlasarak, vergi ve kultur iliskisini belirgin kilmaya cabalamaktadir.

Este artículo presenta un modelo que supone la racionalidad de los políticos y gobernantes cuando fijan las tasas de impuestos de renta y de consumo de cada contribuyente, y sugiere que esas decisiones dependen del tamaño y la movilidad política de los grupos de votantes y de sus expectativas sobre las condiciones económicas, entre otros factores, lo que ayuda a explicar las reformas regresivas adoptadas en América Latina durante las crisis económicas desde los años ochenta. Además, contrasta el modelo con un panel de datos no balanceado de 18 países para el periodo 1980-2010. This paper develops a model that assumes politicians´ rationality when fixing tax rates applied on revenue and consumption of each taxpayer. The paper also suggests some factors to consider are political mobility of voters and economic expectations, which can explain regressive tax reforms adopted in Latin America since the economic crises of the 80s. Additionally, it contrasts the model with an unbalanced data panel (18 countries from 1980 to 2010).

The purpose of this paper is to offer a primer on certain important features and issues concerning Internet and taxation in the European Union. After a general introduction concerning the origins of the matter, the paper discusses why a tax on the huge profits made by the big US digital MNEs in Europe was not substantially reflected in the tax policy of EU members, notwithstanding the large tax gap among EU countries resulting from the shift in profits by the (US digital) MNE towards lower or no taxation countries. Then the main directives on Internet and taxation introduced by the EU (and also by the OECD) since the late 1990s are discussed: the EU especially focusses on establishing the due place of taxation on electronic commerce, while the OECD (more recently together with the G20) has placed the emphasis on regulating Transfer Prices and contrasting Base Erosion and Profits’ Shifting (BEPS).

In the aftermath of the financial crisis most European countries are continuing to face employment problems. In a number of Member States government intervention has further resulted in increasing debt levels and high tax burdens overall and in particular on labour. Therefore well-targeted tax reforms seem to be in order to improve the labour market outcomes. It is often implicitly assumed that a decrease on the employee side, i.e. in the personal income tax rate or the employee part of social security contribution, leads to a higher labour supply. Similarly, a decrease in the employer labour taxes is often assumed to raise the demand of labour. However, the economic literature argues that in the presence of labour market imperfection economic incidence of a tax change is often different from the legal incidence. In this case the impact of a tax change on labour market outcomes depends on the interaction of the demand and the supply side of the market. This interaction is determined by the behaviou al responses of economic operators, measured by elasticities. Higher (demand or supply) elasticities will cause larger responses to tax changes, with the relatively less elastic side bearing a higher tax burden. Against this background four main goals of this study emerge. First, is to identify from the literature which labour market imperfections result in employment problems and to attribute them to the labour supply or on the labour demand side. Given the heterogeneity in the labour market situation of different groups, we also set out to identify which socioeconomic groups are most vulnerable to employment problems. The next step is to review the literature which assesses the short-run and long-run economic incidence of labour taxation. To further break down the incidence into its underlying determinants we also review the literature on the (tax) elasticities of labour supply and labour demand. Then the literature on the influence of the economic environment on the tax incidence outcome, most notably the wage setting mechanisms and the institutional background, is reviewed. Finally the findings of the literature review are brought together in a framework of indicators to identify the potential of tax reforms to reduce tax related employment problems.

The paper deals with the topic of direct and indirect support for research and development and its use in small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the electronic industry. The Czech Republic is the geographic segment to be explored. A chapter on theoretical issues is followed by a description of the current situation in the Czech Republic and abroad and access to legal support for research and development in the business sector. Primary data collected from a survey are analysed in the analytical part. Some small and medium-sized enterprises of chosen group of manufacturing industry focus on research and development performed by they own means and they searched the possibility of financing the research from various sources. The initiative of these enterprises increase considerably their competitiveness in the global market and they realize the necessity of the innovation policy in the strategic management of the business, but still they do not make full use of all available supports in research and development from public sources and instruments of fiscal policy, which allows the legislation of the Czech Republic.

We build a two sector (agriculture and manufacturing) heterogenous agent model to analyze the effects of a food subsidy program on output and prices. The government may finance this subsidy by levying a distortionary income tax or a tax on manufacturing consumption. We find that in the long run the program increases the food output but lowers the manufacturing output, in both methods of its financing. While the price of food crop relative to the price of manufacturing good falls with subsidies in the income tax regime, the effect is opposite in the consumption tax regime. We also find that the food subsidy program may have long-run welfare gains for the two agents, but only for a certain range of subsidies. However, our simulations suggest that there is no subsidies which benefit both agents at the same time. Further, financing this program using an indirect consumption tax is a Pareto improvement over the direct income tax regime.

Investment in research and innovation plays a critical role in kick-starting smart growth and upgrading the competitiveness of European companies. In the post-crisis world, Europe needs innovation more than ever before to keep up with the rapid technology advances and growing global competition. R&D tax incentives are an important innovation policy tool widely used in Europe. In some countries, during the crisis, tax instruments have become increasingly important for stimulating private R&D than direct funding. The recent study conducted jointly by DG TAXUD and DG GROW finds fiscal incentives for R&D expenses to be effective in stimulating investment in R&D. The size of the effect varies across countries which can be linked to country specific features, but, crucially, also to differences in the design and organisational practices of the fiscal schemes. The study identifies what are good designs for R&D tax incentives and which features are to be avoided. To answer this question, the study benchmarks the 80 existing R&D tax incentives in 33 countries (including all EU Member States) based on a number of identified good practices in design and administration.

The hypotheses of non-addiction, myopia and rational addiction are tested using annual, quarterly and monthly data. Changes in the prices of Japanese cigarettes can be viewed as exogenous from the point of view of consumer behaviour, because the Japanese government controls cigarette prices. The empirical results of this paper support the addiction hypothesis. The short-run and long-run price elasticities range from −0.338 to −0.421, and from −0.679 to −0.686, respectively; thus, increases in tax revenues in the long run are likely to be smaller than those in the short run. As a result, tax increases would be an effective means of curbing smoking and reducing its social cost. Furthermore, the debt compensation programmes for the Japan Railway and the National Forestry will not go according to plan, unless revenues are increased in the future.

A problematic feature of the existing empirical literature on the relationship between revenue decentralization (RD) and inflation is the use of inaccurate measures for RD. Using a newly constructed measure for RD that accounts for over-time changes in sub-national tax autonomy, this paper finds that RD leads to lower inflation.

Ghana became an oil producing country in December 2010. This development renewed the expectation of the citizenry as to the revenue that will accrue to the state and its direct effect on standard of living. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the Ghanaian upstream petroleum fiscal regime, including state and investor shares, and to compare it with petroleum fiscal regimes of some six other oil producing African countries. The qualitative assessment compared the regime on general taxation and petroleum taxation in particular. The traditional Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) method was used in the quantitative assessment of the regimes. Out of the seven regimes used in the quantitative analysis, the Ghanaian regime ranks sixth in terms of government take. It also ranks second with 31 months investor payback period based on post-tax discounted cash flow. Though the Ghanaian fiscal regime appears to be progressive; thin capitalisation, royalty rate, and cost recovery limits withholding taxes on interest. Therefore tying of additional oil entitlements to profits are recommended in future reviews of the Ghanaian fiscal regime. It appears from the study that the Ghanaian regime is not optimal and the recommendation provided would help improve upon it.

Taxation is an important tool to enhance the economic development and to finance the expenditure responsibilities of a government. This paper attempts to measure the tax capacity and tax effort of 14 major Indian states from 1992-92 to 2010-11 using Stochastic Frontier Analysis. The use of tax capacity frontier helps to identify those states which are operating near their tax capacity and states which are away from tax frontier. The results indicate presence of large variation in tax effort index across states and which seems to be increasing over time. Econometric analysis suggests that economic and structural variables have significant impact on the tax capacity. While per-capita gross state domestic product has positive effect on states' own tax revenue, relative size of agriculture sector of a state has adverse effect on its own tax revenue. The evidence on tax efficiency suggests that the higher inter-governmental transfers tend to reduce tax efficiency. Outstanding liabilities and expenditure on debt repayment also indicate adverse effect on tax efficiency, but the adverse effect of the latter is lesser than the former. Enactment of Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act seems to have improved the tax efficiency which has been further strengthened by the better law and order inside states. Higher political competition inside a state, represented by effective number of parties, has favourable effect on the tax efficiency of a state. Implications are drawn for policy.

We extend a standard model of international risk sharing to include an empirically plausible distortion: Taxes. The tax-inclusive theory implies, even under full risk sharing, a predictable relationship between consumption growth and the consumption and capital income tax rates, both within and across countries. We find strong empirical evidence in favor of this relationship. While idiosyncratic output fluctuations account for substantially more of cross-country consumption growth variability than do taxes, trends in tax differentials are found to be informative about the dynamic evolution of international risk sharing. In particular, adjusting for capital taxes reveals a marked improvement in risk sharing over the last three decades that is absent in baseline measures. This improvement has been driven by the convergence of average tax rates on capital income across OECD countries toward the United States average capital tax rate.

English Abstract: Automatic stabilizers as a factor of cyclical fluctuations stabilization attract economists' attention for several decades. This paper deals with the mechanisms through which automatic stabilizers influence economy and positive and negative effects on aggregate demand they can produce. It is common when discussing automatic stabilizers to put the accent on certain tax categories, such as personal income tax and corporate income tax, оr some public expenditures, such as unemployment benefits and social protection. Given that, here only fiscal stabilizers will be discussed, although some nonfiscal categories also demonstrate stabilizing impact.Serbian Abstract: Аутоматски стабилизатори као фактор стабилизације цикличних флуктуација привлаче пажњу економиста већ неколико деценија. Овај рад се бави механизмима путем којих аутоматски стабилизатори утичу на економска кретања и позитивним и негативним ефектима на агрегатну тражњу које они могу да произведу. Уобичајено је, када се расправља о аутоматским стабилизаторима, да се нагласак стави на одређене порезе, као што су порез на доходак физичких лица и порез на добит корпорација, или неке јавне расходе, као што су накнаде за незапосленост и социјална заштита. Сходно томе, у раду се разматрају само фискални стабилизатори, иако и неке нефискалне категорије такође остварују аутоматске стабилизационе ефекте.

This study reviews, assesses and compares twelve methodologies which can be used for measuring compliance costs of taxation. These methodologies are: the Standard Cost Model (SCM), Paying Taxes, the Taxpayer/Business Burden Model, the Total Cost of Regulation to Business (TCR), the Scanning Instrument Regulations of Other Compliance Costs (SIROCCO), the Regulatory Check-up Model (RCM), Guidelines on the Identification and Presentation of Compliance Costs in Legislative Proposals by the Federal Government (GIPCC), the Cost-Driven Approach to Regulatory Burden (CAR), the Complexity Index of the UK Office of Tax Simplification, the Total Cost to Serve (TCS), the Tax Information and Impact Note (TIIN), and the Bureaucracy Cost Index (BKI).

The design of a tax system is a daunting task. Economies have become increasingly complex, which makes the design of taxes has to take into account behavioral taxpayers' responses - including mobility -, but also tax planning issues. Additionally, increasing inequality trends put more pressure on design. This complex framework increases the need of complete and constantly updated information about the functioning of the system to carry out welfare-enhancing reforms and having stable sources of public funding. It seems now the moment the Spanish tax system takes advantage of all sources of information to undertake a necessary reform. For this ambitious purpose, we aim at providing a novel source of information: the (objective) opinion of tax professionals. From a survey all over Spain, tax professionals unanimously conclude the current tax system is unfair, while the main inefficiencies, rather than due to traditional responses, come out as a consequence of tax planning and tax mobility. We hope the complete results of the survey are a useful source of information.

Is it worth introducing experience rating in France? In this paper, we aim at studying the effects of experience rating on a typical european labor market with high firing costs, short term contracts and a binding minimum wage. We show, using a stochastic job matching model, that experience rating is likely to increase employment and to improve economic efficiency on such markets., Faut-il moduler les cotisations patronales à l'assurance chômage ? L'objet de cet article est d'étudier les conséquences d'une modulation des cotisations patronales à l'assurance chômage sur un marché du travail de type « européen », avec des coûts de licenciement, des emplois à durée déterminée et un salaire minimum. L'étalonnage d'un modèle de flux prenant en compte de telles caractéristiques suggère que la modulation des cotisations patronales est susceptible d'accroître l'emploi et l'efficacité économique sur ce type de marché du travail., Cahuc Pierre, Malherbet Franck. Faut-il moduler les cotisations patronales à l'assurance chômage ?. In: Revue économique, volume 52, n°3, 2001. pp. 695-703.

In this paper we argue that tax enforcement is an additional contextual factor affecting tax morale, one of the most important determinants of tax compliance. By using a unique dataset that merges a representative sample of Italian households with administrative data on tax enforcement, we find first that tax morale is positively correlated with tax enforcement. Second, to deal with possible endogeneity of tax enforcement, we show that results are confirmed in an IV specification using the change in the tax gap at the provincial level as an instrument for tax enforcement. Finally, we provide evidence that the impact of tax enforcement and social environment is stronger at low quantiles of tax morale. Our results show that apart from lowering the expected value of tax evasion, tax enforcement has an additional and indirect effect on tax compliance through its effect on tax morale.

In many public policy problems, we need to estimate the way in which policy changes affect people's behavior. In the analysis of tax and subsidy reform—the topic of this article—we need to know how tax-induced price changes affect the amounts that people buy of the taxed goods. We present various economic and statistical approaches to obtaining the required estimates. We consider the standard structural methods in economics, where the behavior and welfare of individual agents are captured simultaneously by the specification of utility functions whose parameters are to be estimated. We argue that these methods are less useful than alternatives that directly consider the derivatives of the regression function of average behavior. We consider both parametric and nonparametric estimators of these derivatives in the context of price reform for foods in Pakistan, focussing on the advantages and disadvantages of “average derivative estimation” (ADE). ADE is attractive in principle, because it directly e...

This article discusses the tax policy making process in Australia. It outlines the role of key agencies in this process and highlights some of the key developments in governance and consultation arrangements that have occurred over the past decade.

This paper estimates short-run and long-run elasticities of tax revenue with respect to GDP in eight Latin American countries using quarterly data. Taxes considered are corporate income tax (CIT), personal income tax (PIT), value-added tax (VAT), and overall taxes. Results indicate that long-run elasticities are statistically and economically larger than 1, whereas short-run elasticities appear not to be statistically different from zero in the majority of cases. Tax systems seem very elastic in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. The CIT exhibits the largest estimated long-run elasticity in most countries. Focusing on short-run elasticities that show statistical significance, only the CIT in Colombia and the PIT in Brazil and Colombia show larger fluctuations over the business cycle than growth potential in the long run. Overall, our results indicate that tax systems in Latin America are significantly more elastic than previous estimations.

We demonstrate that the carbon tax imposed by the Canadian province of British Columbia, a unique carbon pricing policy that comprehensively applies to all fossil fuels, caused a decline in short-run gasoline demand that is significantly greater than would be expected from an equivalent increase in the market price of gasoline. That the carbon tax is more salient, or yields a larger change in demand than equivalent market price movements, is robust to a range of specifications including intuitively plausible and strong instrumental variables. Along with calculating the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions attributable to the tax, we discuss potential explanations for the differential consumer responses to the carbon tax relative to the marketdetermined price.

This paper explores how a perceived tax burden is influenced by the degree that neighbors prefer income redistribution. Further, this paper investigates how the influence of neighbors is affected by the degree of interaction between neighbors. For these purposes, individual-level data and place of residence data were combined. After controlling for individual characteristics, I obtained the following key findings: people are more likely to perceive the amount of tax as low when neighbors are more likely to support redistribution policies. Further, this neighbor effect increases when community participation rates are high. This tendency is clearly observed in high-income groups but not in low-income groups. This implies that the norm for redistribution leads rich people to consider the tax burden as low. Further, the effect of the norm increases when there is a greater accumulation of social capital within a residential area. That is, one’s perceived tax burden is influenced by psychological externalities.

In this paper we demonstrate that even if policies prior to reform have been rational, it is possible, in fact in certain policy areas likely, that a green tax reform, contrary to the perceived wisdom among economists, will be associated with a double-dividend, i.e. with both environmental and fiscal benefits. We first establish this theoretically by avoiding imposing potentially unrealistic separability assumptions, and by recognising that taxation involves administrative costs. To illustrate our theoretical results, we use graphical tools well-known from fishery economics to assess the effects of the introduction of a tax on road transport.

In this paper, we elicit preferences of Swiss citizens for the allocation of income redistribution to different uses through a Discrete Choice Experiment performed in 2008. Neustadt and Zweifel (2009} provide an estimate of the total desired amount of income redistribution as a share of disposable income. Here, we estimate marginal willingness-to-pay values for types of recipients (old-age pensioners, people with ill health, the unemployed, working poor, and families with children) and their nationality (Swiss, citizens of western European countries, others). Hypotheses derived from the insurance motive for redistribution receive some empirical support.

Regional policies that seek to reduce economic inequalities between regions are common. These policies normally involve subsidies or transfers to the poorest regions. Over any given short-term horizon such subsidies serve to reduce inter-regional inequalities, but as they also affect migration patterns the long-term effects are less clear. This paper demonstrates using a three-region general equilibrium model that subsidising the poorest region may be to the detriment of the periphery as a whole and even to the very region that receives the subsidy, if the subsidy draws firms away from a nearby region that would function better as a production centre. If the subsidy does not attract a sufficient number of firms to the subsidised region, then the long-term effect on the residents of that region would be negative. Though further research is needed to isolate the conditions under which such an effect would arise, this result has potentially important implications for the design of regional policy.

Production subsidies have not been used by International Business literature to explain firms internationalization processes. We argue subsides may have a role to play in that process. Using a longitudinal database (1996-2003) at the plant level, this paper aims to shed light on the causal nexus between production-related subsidies and exports, in Portugal. We implement a propensity score matching approach in order to evaluate the effects of subsidies on both the probability of domestic firms to begin exporting and on the probability of increasing the export share of already exporters. We find no impact of subsidies on the ability of domestic firms to become exporters; additionally, no effects of subsidies are detected on export shares. Such disappointing results may be explained by the inefficiency in the granting criteria.

This paper presents a case study on reforming a very dysfunctional labor market with a deep insider-outsider divide, namely the Spanish case. We show how a dual market, with permanent and temporary employees, makes real reform much harder, and leads to purely marginal changes that do not alter the fundamental features of labour market institutions. While the Great Recession and the start of the sovereign debt crisis have lately triggered two labor reforms, the political economy equilibrium has not allowed them to be transformational enough. JEL codes H29; J23; J38; J41; J64

Earlier empirical literature has examined some long- and medium-term aspects of macro-fiscal volatility while leaving its short-term fiscal impact unexplored. To help fill that gap, we examine the impact of macro-fiscal volatility on the composition of public spending. To that end, we analyse a panel of 10 EU countries during 1991—2007. Our results suggest that contemporaneous increases in the volatility of regularly collected revenues such as the VAT and income taxes tend to tilt the expenditure composition in favour of public investment. In contrast, increases in the volatility of ad hoc –type of taxes such as capital taxes tend to favour public consumption spending. A possible explanation to these differences concerns news about the underlying economic conditions embedded in short-term volatility changes: the policy maker may be more inclined to increase public investment in response to persistent changes in the economic conditions, while temporary changes may prompt a reaction on consumption spending.