Taxation is becoming more and more relevant for firms and managers decisions, mainly due to the impacts of taxation on firms and projects performance, profitability and value. This book provides an introductory overview of taxation in the fields of finance and accounting. It covers several fundamental topics of taxation, such as income, corporate and value add tax, and tax planning and management, international taxation, EU tax harmonization and transfer prices. This book intends to provide the readers with an understanding of the main concepts and principles of these topics, regardless of specific country contexts in law. With this book, readers will be able to understand the fundamentals of taxation at a conceptual and practical level. By using theory and practical examples, readers will understand taxation at a broader level, without being concerned about country-specific issues.

Virtually all fiscal measures influence people's health, through their impacts on behaviour, consumption, income and wealth. A narrow subset of fiscal measures, however, can be more directly aimed at improving health by targeting behaviours and risks that are known to be strongly associated with health outcomes. The purpose of this book is to discuss the subject of these measures, which we define as 'health taxes'. The book aims to enumerate key health taxes of interest, explore their positive and negative effects, and how these effects are influenced by the design of these taxes and the context in which they are applied. We ask how and where they can be implemented. Critically, we build an argument throughout the book for why policymakers across government should care about health taxes.

VAT: An Introduction initiates students and practitioners into the South African value-added tax (VAT) system by guiding them through the basic principles of the Value-Added Tax Act 89 of 1991 (VAT Act). It covers the processes to be followed when dealing with VAT and sheds light on the most important case law and VAT legislation.

Complex concepts and the key objectives and principles of the VAT system are explained simply and clearly, without using unnecessary jargon. This makes VAT: An Introduction suitable for anyone who has to apply basic VAT principles in a business environment or provide general VAT advice and assistance.

The book is also an excellent study guide for students. It will help students understand the mechanics of the South African VAT system and the practical implications of VAT. Students and practitioners will find the revision questions at the end of each chapter useful to test their understanding and knowledge of the fundamentals of VAT.

In Progress and Poverty, economist Henry George scrutinizes the connection between population growth and distribution of wealth in the economy of the late nineteenth century. The initial portions of the book are occupied with refuting the demographic theories of Thomas Malthus, who asserted that the vast abundance of goods generated by an economy's growth was spent on food. Consequently the population rises, keeping living standards low, poverty widespread, and starvation and disease common. Henry George had a different attitude: that poverty could be solved and economic progress preserved. To prove this, he draws upon decades of data which show that the increase in land prices restrains the amount of production on said land; business owners thus have less to pay their workers, with the result being mass poverty especially within cities.

International affairs no longer constitute a separate, stand-alone policy area. International affairs have come to permeate virtually every aspect of society, from their origins as primarily territorial, war and peace considerations to regulating everything from consumer protection to agriculture and the environment today; this phenomenon is amplified in the European Union where there is an extra layer of supra-national legislation. In the federal state structure, where material competences are attributed to both federal and component states, the difficult question arises as to which of these levels of government should act on the international stage. Federations have to find a balance between federal unity in international affairs on the one hand and component state autonomy in their attributed material competences on the other. This question regarding the legitimacy of treaties has received insufficient attention until now. In this book, this fundamental question and its consequent permutations and impacts are addressed from a theoretical perspective as well as from a strictly legal perspective. The more abstract theoretical analysis put forth is then applied by way of reference to the example of the sensitive subject of double tax treaties. Whilst this book does not address fiscal federalism per se, though it touches upon its externalization reflected in the division of treaty making power.