Our small book presents areport which has been prepared in the year 2000 for the Taxation and Custorns Union Directorate General of the European Commission, under contract no. T AXUD / 00 / 312. Some of the results form part of the report "Company Taxation in the Internal Market" of the Commission Services released in autumn 2001. We present estimates of effective average tax rates (EATR) in five EU Member States (France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK) plus the USA based on the European Tax Analyzer approach. The European Tax Analyzer is a computer based model firm approach for the computation and comparison of international company tax burdens. It has been developed in co-operation with the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW). We would like to thank the ZEW for this co-operation. Furthermore, we gratefully acknowledge the help and advice of Gerd Gutekunst, Rieo A. Hermann and Thorsten Stetter in preparing the report. Special mention must be made of Gerd Gutekunst, who was also responsible for preparing the printed version of this report.

While how much you earn is important, how much you keep is critical. Spending your money efficiently so that you can save a significant part of what you earn is central to successful money management. The book's author recognizes that children have an immense ability to learn even when confronted with adult concepts. The Repossession of Riley captures the attention of children through the drama of a puppy that is taken away because of family debt and shows how the children triumph and get their puppy back through financial efficiency and saving concepts. Beyond the obvious lessons of the story, the book should cause your kids to be cautious throughout their lives when they are confronted with credit spending decisions. They are going to remember buying on credit may not end well.

The increasing international mobility of capital, firms and consumers affects tax policies in most OECD countries, playing a major role in reforming national tax systems. Haufler uses standard microeconomic analysis to consider the fundamental forces underlying this process. Topics include a variety of different international tax avoidance strategies--capital flight, profit shifting in multinational firms, and cross-border shopping. Haufler addresses the issue of coordination in different areas of tax policy, with emphasis on regional tax harmonization in the EU. Also included is a detailed introduction to recent theoretical literature.

Taxing America provides the first historical study of Wilbur Daigh Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 1958 to 1974. The work of Mills, an extremely influential politician between 1945 and 1975, offers considerable insights into the evolution of income taxation, Social Security and Medicare--three policies at the center of today's political debates. Unlike the existing historical scholarship, Zelizer's book focuses on the role of Congress, rather than the executive branch, in the evolution of the welfare state during this seminal period.

This is a political history of Labour's use of the tax system from 1906 to 1979; an epilogue brings the story up to the present, surveying New Labour's tax policies and dilemmas. Richard Whiting's lucid and readable study examines how Labour used taxation to further its political aims: to fund welfare, manage the economy, promote fairness and achieve greater equality. This study sheds new light on Labour's history, and is a valuable contribution to understanding both the tax structure and the politics of twentieth-century Britain more generally.

This volume summarizes the substantial literature on consumption tax policy and the taxation of capital, presents the main theoretical and empirical results of the technical literature on taxation, and extends that literature in a variety of directions with new results. Chapters are self-contained as far as possible, and each uses a variety of models rather than just one to study the issue at hand.

Following the introduction of the euro, the European Union has started to debate the desirability and feasibility of more co-ordination in the field of capital income taxation, but a broad, tax-policy type of discussion is lacking. The papers in this volume fill this void, addressing the question of whether and where capital income should be taxed, the issues that arise in taxing equity income and imposing a withholding tax on interest, specific comprehensive proposals for taxing capital income in open economies, and the difficulties of and alternatives to maintaining separate corporate income taxes in the EU.

Why were Federalists at the 1787 Philadelphia convention--ostensibly called to revise the Articles of Confederation--so intent on scrapping the old system and drawing up a completely new frame of government?

In "Redeeming the Republic," Roger Brown focuses on state public-policy issues to show how recurrent outbreaks of popular resistance to tax crackdowns forced state governments to retreat from taxation, propelling elites into support for the constitutional revolution of 1787. The Constitution, Brown contends, resulted from upper-class dismay over the state governments' inability to tax effectively for state and federal purposes. The Framers concluded that, without a rebuilt, energized central government, the confederation would experience continued monetary and fiscal turmoil until republicanism itself became endangered.

A fresh and searching study of the hard questions that divided Americans in these critical years and still do today, "Redeeming the Republic" shows how local failures led to federalist resolve and ultimately to a totally new frame of central government.

Fully updated each year, this, the leading textbook in the field, continues to provide coverage of the UK's tax system as it has for the last 19 years. Written in an accessible style with many examples, activities and questions throughout, this textbook gives the reader a thorough understanding of the UK's taxation principles and current practices.

All legally enforceable rights cost money. A practical, commonsense notion? Yes, but one ignored by almost everyone, from libertarian ideologues to Supreme Court justices to human rights advocates. The simple insight that rights are expensive reminds us that freedom is not violated by a government that taxes and spends, but requires it - and requires a citizenry vigilant about how money is allocated. Laying bare the folly of some of our most cherished myths about rights, this groundbreaking tract will permanently change the terms of our most critical and contentious political debates.

This volume collects articles from the Symposium series of the National Tax Journal from 1993 to 1998. Leading economists and other scholars discuss and debate current tax policy issues in nontechnical language and illustrate how the principles of tax analysis can be applied to real-world issues. Among the topics addressed are the practical feasibility of consumption tax alternatives to the current income tax, the rationale and implications of devolution of fiscal responsibilities to state and local governments, the effect of tax policy on economic growth, and the value of local tax incentives designed to attract and retain business.

This work examines tax policies and tax systems as they arise from democratic choices, set against the background of a market economy. Professors Hettich and Winer find that democratic institutions yield complex tax systems with features that follow a varied but predictable pattern. In developing their analysis, the authors use formal modelling of voting behavior, emphasizing recent advances in the theory of probabilistic voting. This book differs from the available tax literature by relating fiscal choices directly to voting and by examining tax systems in democratic countries from a variety of perspectives. While the authors primarily focus on explaining observed features of tax systems, they also devote considerable space to the discussion of the welfare and efficiency effects of taxation in the presence of collective choice, and to a review of other models and of the related literature. In addition, they use computational general equilibrium analysis and statistical research on national and state governments in the US and Canada to link theory to empirical data.

Taxing America provides the first historical study of Wilbur Daigh Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 1958 to 1974. The work of Mills, an extremely influential politician between 1945 and 1975, offers considerable insights into the evolution of income taxation, Social Security and Medicare--three policies at the center of today's political debates. Unlike the existing historical scholarship, Zelizer's book focuses on the role of Congress, rather than the executive branch, in the evolution of the welfare state during this seminal period.

This book assembles nine papers on tax progressivity and its relationship to income inequality, written by leading public finance economists. The papers document the changes during the 1980s in progressivity at the federal, state, and local level in the US. One chapter investigates the extent to which the declining progressivity contributed to the well-documented increase in income inequality over the past two decades, while others investigate the economic impact and cost of progressive tax systems. Special attention is given to the behavioral response to taxation of high-income individuals, portfolio behavior, and the taxation of capital gains. The concluding set of essays addresses the contentious issue of what constitutes a 'fair' tax system, contrasting public attitudes towards alternative tax systems to economists' notions of fairness. Each essay is followed by remarks of a commentator plus a summary of the discussion among contributors.

This book surveys recent developments in public economics by taking as a case-study the proposals for a basic income/flat tax scheme. It discusses various approaches to taxation and presents a framework for a system that would affect both personal income and the social security system, replacing the one by a flat-rate income tax and the other by a guaranteed income. This idea has generated wide interest in a number of countries, and is being actively discussed by several political parties. This book explains how these changes would benefit a wide variety of social groups, leading to a greater redistribution of income. At the same time, it also raises the question of whether a single reform can meet the very different objectives of different supporters. The author reviews different areas of public economics in which there has been active research in recent years- namely the theory of optimum taxation, public choice theory, general equilibrium analysis of incidence, numerical tax- benefit modelling, and econometric studies of work incentives-and asks how these contribute to our understanding of this particular policy reform. He also indicates the promising directions for future research. The author does not argue for or against the basic income/flat tax proposal, but believes it should be on the agenda for any serious discussion of tax and social security reform for the twenty-first century.

This study addresses two interrelated issues in international taxation. The first objective is to assess the nature and extent of the international mobility of foreign direct investment. This empirical work is based on the operations of US multinational corporations abroad (production, employment and capital stock), not simply on financial flows of foreign affilitates. It considers whether distinctions between horizontal versus vertical integration can be applied to opertions in developed versus developing countries, and whether either form of integration is very sensitive to tax and cost conditions, not only in the host country but in the US. Growing sensitivity of foreign direct investment to taxes is one reason for governments to be concerned about tax competition among jurisdictions to attract economic activity. Tax competition, however, also arises from an attempt to shift the real activity. The second objective is to assess how tax competition is affecting the structure of national tax systems and whether efforts at international coordination of tax policy are likely to affect the progression of such changes in the future.

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year "An intellectual excursion of a kind rarely offered by modern economics." -Foreign Affairs Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the most widely discussed work of economics in recent years. But are its analyses of inequality and economic growth on target? Where should researchers go from there in exploring the ideas Piketty pushed to the forefront of global conversation? A cast of leading economists and other social scientists-including Emmanuel Saez, Branko Milanovic, Laura Tyson, and Michael Spence-tackle these questions in dialogue with Piketty. "A fantastic introduction to Piketty's main argument in Capital, and to some of the main criticisms, including doubt that his key equation...showing that returns on capital grow faster than the economy-will hold true in the long run." -Nature "Piketty's work...laid bare just how ill-equipped our existing frameworks are for understanding, predicting, and changing inequality. This extraordinary collection shows that our most nimble social scientists are responding to the challenge." -Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan

While this volume presents the important writings of James M. Buchanan on taxation and debt, Geoffrey Brennan makes it clear in the foreword that the thrust of Buchanan's work in this area has been to integrate theories of taxation and debt with public-expenditure theory. Therefore, the editors strongly urge that the present volume on taxation and debt be read in tandem with the subsequent Volume 15, 'Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory'. Included in this present volume are thirty-five important writings by Buchanan on taxation and debt. These are grouped into the following major subject categories: taxation, politics, and public choice; earmarking and incidence in democratic process; analytical and ethical foundations of tax limits; the fiscal constitution; confessions of a burden monger; Ricardian equivalence; the constitution of a debt-free polity. As Geoffrey Brennan points out in the foreword to this volume, "Although James Buchanan's interests are wide-ranging, the core of his professional reputation as an economist and the origin of much of his broader thinking lie in public economics -- in engagement with the questions of what governments do and how governments should properly finance what they do." This volume together with its partner subsequent volume present clear and accessible insights into the rich economic work for which Buchanan is best known.

The contemporary fiscal crisis faced by the American federal government represents the end of a fiscal regime that began with the financing of World War II. In this volume, an inter-disciplinary group of scholars explores the history of American taxation and public finance since 1941 in an attempt to understand the political, social and economic forces that have shaped the current regime. Specifically, they examine the historical context of earlier tax regimes and national crises; explore the ways post-1941 governments used taxation to finance war, social security, and economic stability; analyze the politics of post-1941 tax reform; and apply history to a consideration of the dynamics that are likely to characterize future tax regimes. The contributors are convinced that understanding the long-term development of American taxation and public finance will help policy makers determine the possibilities and constraints that must be taken in account in evaluating, and possibly reforming, the ways in which the nation pays for government.

Commenting on his collaboration with Geoffrey Brennan on "The Power to Tax," James M. Buchanan says that the book is "demonstrable proof of the value of genuine research collaboration across national-cultural boundaries." Buchanan goes on to say that ""The Power to Tax" is informed by a single idea--the implications of a revenue-maximizing government."
Originally published in 1980, "The Power to Tax" was a much-needed answer to the tax revolts sweeping across the United States. It was a much-needed answer as well in the academic circles of tax theory, where orthodox public finance models were clearly inadequate to the needs at hand.
The public-choice approach to taxation which Buchanan had earlier elaborated stood in direct opposition to public-finance orthodoxy. What Buchanan and Brennan constructed in "The Power to Tax" was a middle ground between the two. As Brennan writes in the foreword, "The underlying motivating question was simple: Why not borrow the motivational assumptions standard in public-choice theory and put them together with assumptions about policy-maker discretion taken from public-finance orthodoxy?"
The result was a controversial book--and a much misunderstood one as well. Looking back twenty years later, Brennan feels confirmed in the rightness of the theories he and Buchanan espoused, particularly in their unity with the public-choice tradition: "The insistence on motivational symmetry is a characteristic feature of the public choice approach, and it is in this dimension that "The Power to Tax" and the orthodox public- finance approach diverge."
James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century.
The entire series will include:
Volume 1 "The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty"
Volume 2 "Public Principles of Public Debt "
Volume 3 "The Calculus of Consent "
Volume 4 "Public Finance in Democratic Process"
Volume 5 "The Demand and Supply of Public Goods"
Volume 6 "Cost and Choice"
Volume 7 "The Limits of Liberty"
Volume 8 "Democracy in Deficit"
Volume 9 "The Power to Tax"
Volume 10 "The Reason of Rules"
Volume 11 "Politics by Principle, Not Interest"
Volume 12 "Economic Inquiry and Its Logic"
Volume 13 "Politics as Public Choice"
Volume 14 "Debt and Taxes"
Volume 15 "Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory"
Volume 16 "Choice, Contract, and Constitutions"
Volume 17 "Moral Science and Moral Order"
Volume 18 "Federalism, Liberty, and the Law"
Volume 19 "Ideas, Persons, and Events"
Volume 20 "Indexes"

Property tax circuit breakers can be used to increase tax equity by reducing the most onerous property tax burdens as measured in relation to income. This is particularly important for households at the lower end of the income distribution, and for households in states with high property taxes. By targeting property tax relief to those most in need, circuit breakers promote tax equity at minimal cost to state and local budgets, while preserving the basic nature and strengths of this tax as a source of local revenue. Although circuit breakers have great potential for improving property tax fairness, many programs fall short of ideal.
This report covers the rationale for providing property tax relief to those who have a high relative tax burden. It compares the fairness of various criteria used by states for eligibility, and illustrates types and key features of property tax circuit breakers. Ten pitfalls with existing tax circuit breakers are described along with solutions to address inadequate property tax relief for those with the highest tax burden. It covers three approaches to administer property tax circuit breaker programs to provide greater relief to those in need. Guidelines for elected representatives and tax policy advocates to improve tax circuit breaker rules are provided. Recommendations for the best design for property tax circuit breakers are included in this policy focus report.
Although circuit breakers have great potential for improving property tax fairness, many programs fall short of ideal. Recommendations for the best design for property tax circuit breakers are included in this policy focus report.

A sophisticated and accessible application of the newest theoretical work in public-policy history and legal studies, this book is a detailed account of how a permanent income tax was enacted into law in the United States. The tax originated as an apology for the aggressive manipulation of other forms of taxation, especially the tariff, during the Civil War. Levied with very low rates on a small proportion of the population and raising little revenue, the early tax was designed to preserve imbalances in the structure of wealth and opportunity, rather than to ameliorate or abolish them, by strengthening the status quo against fundamental attacks by the political left and right. This book shows that the early course of income taxation was more clearly the product of centrist ideological agreement, despite occasional divergences, than of "conservative-liberal" allocative conflict.