This book is the only in-depth analysis of VAT to focus on exemptions as a whole. Ten insightful chapters - by economists, lawyers, legal academics, and government tax advisors from a wide variety of jurisdictions - grapple with the essential questions: Are VAT exemptions desirable? Are they avoidable? Are alternative legal designs possible? Are such alternatives necessary? What new problems do such designs give rise to? The authors emphasize in particular the design alternatives to exemptions that characterize 'modern' VAT and the newly proposed 'post-modern' VAT, both those that are already in operation in some countries and others that have not yet been attempted anywhere in the world. Among the core issues discussed are the following: 'out-of-scope' supplies and suppliers; merit or concessional exemptions for, e.g., charities, healthcare, cultural activities, and education services; and 'technical' exemptions applied to, e.g., gambling, immovable property, financial and insurance services.

EU investment in China has increased dramatically since the early 1990s and is poised to increase further in light of Chinas recent accession to the World Trade Organisation. This book explores and critically appraises the existing legal framework governing EU-China investment relations,particularly EU investment in China. The current legal framework is composed of Chinese law, EU law and applicable international law, but the Chinese law is unsystematic and hard to discover and the EU has acquired only shared external investment competence which is vaguely defined. The applicable international treaties are incomplete, incoherent, or either too general or too specialised. Besides this, the international fora to settle investment disputes are still not readily available. Furthermore while law has played a very important role in decision-making by EU investors, the Chinese legal system is generally perceived as ineffective and lacking in effective enforcement of court and arbitration decisions. What the book demonstrates is that the time is ripe for a new international legal framework for foreign investment in China, and that as EU-China economic and political relations continue to improve, construction of such a framework is not only necessary, but also possible.

This book provides an analysis and comparison of international insolvency rules, maritime laws and their inevitable intersection in maritime cross-border insolvencies. Until today, the on-going shipping crisis resulted in the insolvency of numerous shipping companies all over the world. The tensions arising between the legal systems of maritime and insolvency law, paired with conflicts of law in maritime insolvencies, are a major source of legal uncertainty and risk. In 2010, the Comite Maritime International installed an international working group on international maritime insolvencies and until today it is work in progress. This book gives an overview on maritime insolvencies, with a focus on Germany, England & Wales and the USA, and assesses the chances of achieving meaningful harmonization in the complex scenarios, where ships as mobile assets add a further complication to international insolvency proceedings.

Bankrupt Enron paid more than a billion dollars in cash to bankruptcy lawyers, financial advisors, and other bankruptcy professionals. The managers of Enron, like those of most bankrupt companies, paid the professionals with other peoples' money - money that would otherwise have gone to creditors, employees, shareholders, or to saving the companies. To prevent excessive payments, the bankruptcy code and rules establish an elaborate system for public reporting and court approval of professional fees.
Armed with the ability to choose among courts that want or need to attract the cases, the professionals have largely taken charge of the fee-control system and rendered it toothless. The professionals ignore ignore the rules and the courts do nothing about it. Objections to fees are rare, and the courts award almost 99% of the amounts applied for. Fees rose at the rate of 9.5% per year from 1998 through 2007. Effective methods for assessing and controlling fees do exist, but it is not in the interests of the courts or the professionals to employ them.
Based on a study of thousands of documents from the court files in 102 of the largest cases, bankruptcy expert, Lynn M. LoPucki, and political scientist, Joseph W. Doherty, provide an unprecedented window on the worlds of bankruptcy professionals, professional fees, and their scientific study. Through that window, readers see both a disturbing picture of a legal system in crisis and a hopeful one with opportunities for desperately needed reform.
Professional Fees in Corporate Bankruptcies is a scholarly work that employs statistical analysis, and documents its findings to scientific standards. But the authors have written for readers with technical backgrounds in neither bankruptcy nor statistics. This book will be of interest not only to scholars studying professional fees, but also to bankruptcy professionals, judges, policymakers, and anyone interested in the functioning of law-based systems.

This collection of essays critically evaluates the legal framework necessary for the use of autonomous ships in international waters. The work is divided into three parts: Part 1 evaluates how far national shipping regulation, and the public international law background that lies behind it, may need modification and updating to accommodate the use of autonomous ships on international voyages. Part 2 deals with private law and insurance issues such as collision and pollution liability, salvage, limitation of liability and allocation of risk between carrier and cargo interests. Part 3 analyses international convention regimes dealing with maritime safety and other matters, arguing for specific changes in the existing conventions such as SOLAS and MARPOL, which would provide the international framework that is necessary for putting autonomous ships into commercial use. The book also takes the view that amendment of international conventions is important in the case of liability issues, arguing that leaving such matters to national law, particularly issues concerning product liability, could not only restrict or hinder the availability of liability insurance but also hamper the development of technology in this field. Written by internationally-known experts in their respective areas, the book offers a holistic approach to the debate on autonomous ships and makes a timely and important contribution to the literature.

"Most VAT systems exclude public bodies from the scope of value added tax (VAT) systems. However, a movement to include public sector bodies within the GST system to some extent or even fully (as in New Zealand) is gaining momentum, and underlies the European Commission's 2011 study on the treatment and economic impact of exemptions in the public interest. Whether the present EU treatment really is as bad as some of its critics suggest, and whether the New Zealand model really is so perfect that jurisdictions with exclusion models ought simply to replace these existing systems with a New Zealand style system: these are the questions which triggered this research and which form the basis for the critical analysis contained in this book."

The arm's length principle serves as the domestic and international standard toevaluate transfer prices between members of multinational enterprises for taxpurposes. The OECD has adopted the arm's length principle in Article 9 of itsModel Income Tax Convention in order to ensure that transfer prices betweenmembers of multinational enterprises correspond to those that would have beenagreed between independent enterprises under comparable circumstances. Thearm's length principle provides the legal framework for governments to have theirfair share of taxes, and for enterprises to avoid double taxation on their profits.

From modest beginnings in the early 1990's, a reform movement in the regulation of public procurement has mushroomed into a global imperative. Two fundamental values of international free trade policy--value for money and the deterrence of corruption--have brought intense scrutiny to bear on public procurement practices in nearly every country. Now international standards (notably those of the WTO and the EU) must be met if a trading nation is to take its place in the global markets. This collection of essays offers fifteen distinct views on the current status and trends in public procurement and its various aspects. From general discussion of setup, overcoming obstacles, ensuring transparency, and compliance with international rules to specific issues raised in economies as diverse as Kosovo, China, and the United States, "Public Procurement: The Continuing Revolution provides a great wealth of insight and information. Although the emphasis throughout is on legal issues, the contributors include not only lawyers but also economists and specialists in purchasing practice. In addition, this is the first book to note the relatively recent trend, in developed countries, toward a less prescriptive, more flexible approach to regulation in which a degree of transparency is sacrificed. The question of how this trend will affect international procurement regimes is perhaps the most viral and interesting aspect of current theory and practice in the field. "Public Procurement: The Continuing Revolution is of inestimable value not only to public procurement specialists, whatever their profession, but to a much wider audience who will recognise the decisive influence of this important economicactivity on the entire area embracing trade and even international relations. Most of these essays were originally presented as papers at an international conference hosted by the Public Procurement Research Group at the University of Nottingham in September 2001.

This work contains the full text of the papers presented at the second Tax Law History Conference in July 2004. The Conference was organised by the Cambridge Law Faculty's Centre for Tax Law. The papers range widely in terms of period - from the Old Testament to the twentieth century - and geographical areas, with papers on matters relating to not only the United Kingdom but also Canada, Australia and the US. The matters discussed are also broad and include the concept of taxation developed by Adam Smith and his fellow United Kingdom writers of the Enlightenment, problems of adjudication in tax law and of access to justice for taxpayers, definitions of income and its UK subset 'total income', capital gains tax, stamp duty on newspapers, the wartime excess profits tax, the nature of tithes, the strange tale of Jasper Moore, the real nature of the decision in the Duke of Westminster case, the demise of wealth transfer taxes in Canada, the nature of the US corporate tax and debates in the US about whether to raise war finance by issuing bonds or levying tax. As a whole the papers illustrate not only the wide variety but also the real depth of the issues waiting to be investigated in this rapidly growing field of scholarship.

Conflicts of interest arise naturally in all walks of life, particularly in business life. As general and indeed inevitable phenomena, conflicts of interest should not be prohibited but properly managed. This book presents indepth analysis of such management in three areas of corporate governance where the conflict-of-interest problems are particularly acute: executive compensation, financial analysis, and asset management. "Conflicts of Interest" presents the results of a two-year-long research project bringing together academics and practitioners in both law and finance from Europe and the US under the auspices of the Centre for Banking and Financial Law of the University of Geneva. This book discusses the following issues: the duty of loyalty; remedies, such as disclosure, incentives, organizational measures; regulation and enforcement; and market considerations. With its intense focus on the material effects of actual conflicts of interest at the core of modern corporate governance and financial markets, this incomparable book will inform not only business people, practitioners, and academics, but also legislators, regulators, and all concerned with the far-reaching ramifications of conflict-of-interest management.

This book explores the transnational legal infrastructure for dispute resolution in transnational securities transactions. It discusses the role of law and dispute resolution in securities transactions, the types of disputes arising from them, and the institutional and legal aspects of dispute resolution, both generally and regarding aggregate litigation. It illustrates different dispute resolution systems and aggregate litigation methods, and examines the legal issues of dispute resolution arising from transnational securities transactions. In addition, the book proposes two systems of dispute resolution for transnational securities transactions depending on the type of dispute: collective redress through arbitration and a network of alternative dispute resolution systems.

This authoritative treatise on bankruptcy fraud is an invaluable reference book for bankruptcy law practitioners, white-collar criminal lawyers, prosecutors, judges, restructuring professionals, and academicians. Bankruptcy Crimes is the only book extant on the subject and is unique in its dual perspective and analysis of criminality and bankruptcy law.

With the increasing interdependence of global economies, international relations are becoming a more complex system. Through this, the growth of any economy is dependent upon the ease of business transactions; however, in recent times, there has been a growing impact of corporate insolvency law. Corporate Insolvency Law and Bankruptcy Reforms in the Global Economy is an essential reference source that discusses the importance of insolvency laws in the financial architecture of emerging economies, as well as its fundamental issues. Featuring research on topics such as business restructuring, debt recovery, and governance regulations, this book is ideally designed for law students, policymakers, economists, lawyers, and business researchers seeking coverage on the jurisprudence and policy of corporate insolvency law in a globalized context.

Cross-Border Insolvency, fourth edition provides a comprehensive and up to date consideration of the topic of cross-border insolvency. Written in a clear and accessible manner it guides the user seamlessly through this complex area of law. The coverage of the book is divided into two parts. The first part describes the key cross-border insolvency regimes including the EC Insolvency Regulation, the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency, section 426 of the Insolvency Act 1986, and the common law. The second part focuses on specific issues in more detail, such as the court's insolvency jurisdiction, ancillary winding-up, enforcement of foreign insolvency judgments, foreign discharge of debts and insolvency set-off. The fourth edition gives full analysis of the fundamental changes to cross border insolvency law and practice in England including: The impact of the Supreme Court decision in Rubin v Eurofinance; The revised UK Insolvency Rules; Proposals for revision of the EC Insolvency Regulation; Scope of section 426 - HSBC v Tambrook Jersey; Developments in offshore jurisdictions: Primeo Fund and Saad Investments (Cayman), Re C (BVI); Kelmsley v Barclays Bank PLC. Previous print edition ISBN: 9781845921040

Global competition, technological development, and changes in banking laws and regulations are transforming the role of commercial banks and the nature of the banking business within the U.S. financial system. The earlier editions of this work have been revised and expanded to incorporate discussions of these dramatic changes and their results. The discussions of the issues have been kept as current as possible, and a solid background has been supplied to provide perspective. Emphasis has been placed on the management of commercial banks through the formulation and implementation of sound and flexible policies.

This book presents a simplified description of the IRS tax and reporting requirements with an emphasis on "real world" situations. Examples and diagrams help the reader through the maze. First, the book introduces basic concepts and terms. This discussion follows the order of the regulations, and the reader is introduced to relevant terminology and acronyms. Second, it paints a relatively comprehensive picture of a typical structure (one with just a few "bells and whistles") and illustrates this with a simple diagram. Then, it proceeds to set forth a number of fact patterns by changing a few of the assumptions. Next, it describes how to comply with the rules in the context of the various fact patterns. Third, a handful of recommendations on compliance are made. These are based on experience with the new rules. Fourth, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are answered. Features a Glossary at the end. Copies of the important IRS regulations, notices, announcements, forms, instructions, and publications are reproduced in the WORKPAPERS. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

If a broker-dealer liquidates in federal bankruptcy court, why does an insurance company liquidate in state court, and a bank outside of court altogether? Why do some businesses re-organize under state law 'assignments', rather than the more well-known Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code? Why do some laws use the language of bankruptcy but without advancing policy goals of the Bankruptcy Code? In this illuminating work, Stephen J. Lubben tackles these questions and many others related to the collective law of business insolvency in the United States. In the first book of its kind, Lubben notes the broad similarities between the many insolvency systems in the United States while describing the fundamental differences lurking therein. By considering the whole sweep of these laws - running the gamut from Chapter 11 to obscure receivership provisions of the National Bank Act - readers will acquire a fundamental understanding of the 'law of failure'.

The Changing Face of Corruption in the Asia Pacific: Current Perspectives and Future Challenges is a contemporary analysis of corruption in the Asia-Pacific region. Bringing academicians and practitioners together, contributors to this book discuss the current perspectives of corruption's challenges in both theory and practice, and what the future challenges will be in addressing corruption's proliferation in the region.