The new Conceptual Framework applicable to IFRS for SAICA students.

Practice Statement 1: Management Commentary

Practice Statement 2: Making Materiality Judgements

In this book Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Raaj Sah address one of development's major issues. Most of today's countries face town versus country tensions of increasing severity, including such issues as who should pay how much in taxes, who should get how much in subsidies, and what forms the taxes and subsidies should take. This volume analyses these tensions and issues, taking into account the great diversity of institutions and economic environments observed in different developing countries.

Durch die Schaffung gemeinsamer Wirtschaftsraume kommt es sowohl auf unternehmerischer als auch auf persoenlicher Ebene zu internationalen wirtschaftlichen Verflechtungen. Vermoegen wird in verschiedenen Formen in unterschiedlichen Landern investiert, Wohnsitze und Ansassigkeiten werden verlagert. Es kommt zu grenzuberschreitenden Vermoegensbesitzverhaltnissen. Dadurch entstehen in mehreren Landern gleichzeitig steuerliche Anknupfungsmerkmale, die eine Erbschaft- bzw. Schenkungsteuer ausloesen koennen. Nationale deutsche Regelungen reichen in der Regel nicht aus, um eine drohende Doppelbesteuerung ganzlich aufzuheben. Anders als im Bereich der Ertragsteuern ist das Netz der Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen im Bereich der Erbschaft- bzw. Schenkungsteuern in Deutschland und international nicht stark ausgepragt. Dadurch gibt es selbst innerhalb der EU ein hohes Mass an Doppelbesteuerungsrisiken. Die Relevanz und steuerliche Brisanz dieser Thematik werden oft erst erkannt, wenn tatsachlich eine Doppelbesteuerung eintritt. Die Untersuchung zeigt auf, auf welcher Ebene von der Entstehung der Steuer bis zur Ermittlung der finalen Steuerschuld angesetzt werden kann, um im Verhaltnis von Deutschland zu Frankreich, zu Grossbritannien und zu den Niederlanden das Risiko der Doppelbesteuerung zu minimieren.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tax-benefit models are powerful tools for the analysis of the impact of policy reform, in regular use around the world in government and research organizations. This study focuses on one particular model, POLIMOD. The authors provide an illustration of the type of analysis that can be performed, document the inner layers of data manipulation and model construction that shape its outputs, and examine the reliability of those outputs based on a validation against external sources.

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.

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.

In his 1972 Janeway Lectures at Princeton, James Tobin, the 1981 Nobel Prize winner for economics, submitted a proposal for a levy on international currency transactions. The idea was not greeted with enthusiasm, as the 1970s were a period of optimism and confidence in floating exchange rages. Yet, whenever currency crises erupted during the past decades, the proposal for a levy on international currency transactions would once again arise. In the 1990s, two additional facts have sharpened interest in the Tobin tax proposal. First is the growing volume of foreign exchange trading. Second, interest is coming not only from policymakers and experts concerned with the smooth functioning of financial markets. It is shared by those concerned with public financing of development--the fiscal crisis of the state as well as the growing need for international cooperation on problems such as the environment, poverty, peace and security.
This work makes a systematic analysis of the proposal for a foreign exchange transactions levy. Its chapters examine the economic desirability of such a levy, its technical and political feasibility, its revenue potential, the possible uses of that revenue, and related administrative and institutional aspects.

This study addresses a fundamentally new feature of the contemporary world economy: the simultaneous buildup of very large public deficits and debt positions in virtually all of the advanced high-income countries. The recent global financial crisis sharply accelerated this fiscal deterioration, but it was already well underway in some countries, including the United States, where demographic prospects had posed extremely worrisome trajectories for a number of years.The book has three basic objectives. First, it projects the global fiscal outlook to 2035. Second, it asks whether the combination of deficits and debt in a large number of countries at the same time produces an impact on the world economy that is qualitatively different from the more traditional emergence of such problems in one or a few countries in any given period. Third, it analyzes the effects of the fiscal prospects on key economic variables including global interest rates and growth rates.The analysis finds that the current public debt profiles in most advanced economies will grow to dangerous and unsustainable levels over the next couple of decades unless major changes are made in projected spending and revenue levels. The authors conclude that the United States and Japan, in particular, need to start planning now for significant future budget cuts to minimize the risk of a crisis. Acting soon enables the adjustment to be phased in over an extended period, which cushions the inevitable adjustment costs, while avoiding the potentially enormous pressures that could be levied by markets if correction is delayed too long.

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 revolts have occurred both in the United States and abroad. This book examines the causes and consequences of such revolts, with a special focus on the California experience with Proposition 13. The work examines the consequences of property tax limitations for public finance with a detailed analysis of the tax system put into place in California. New theoretical approaches and new evidence from a comprehensive empirical study are used to highlight the equity and efficiency of property tax systems. Since property taxes are the primary source of revenue for local governments, the book compares and contrasts the experiences of several states with regard to the evolution of local government following property tax limitations. Finally, the book considers alternatives for reform and lessons to avoid future tax conflicts of this kind.

Fully updated each year,Taxation: Policy and Practice continues to provide coverage of the UK's tax system as it has for 16 years. It is an excellent aid to support a first course in tax, or as a general introduction to this topic. 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. The companion website provides additional questions and answers, links to other tax materials available online and commentary on tax developments as they occur throughout the year. "An excellent balance of practice and theory, without non essential detail, make this the first choice student text for UK tax" - Professor John Hasseldine, University of Nottingham

Es besteht kein Zweifel daran, dass Familienunternehmen fur die Gesellschaft oekonomisch vorteilhaft sind. Ob dieser Unternehmenstyp auch einen sozialen Nutzen bringt, konnte bisher nicht hinreichend beantwortet werden. Aus diesem Grund beschaftigt sich die Publikation mit dem Wirkungsgrad zwischen Familienunternehmen und dem Sozialkapital in deutschen Landkreisen und kreisfreien Stadten. Hierzu werden die Daten zu Familienunternehmen mit unterschiedlichen Sozialkapital-Indikatoren analysiert. Die Ergebnisse weisen auf einen positiven Zusammenhang zwischen der Familienunternehmensdichte und dem Sozialkapital in einer Region hin.

Diese Studie verknupft die Kapitalanlageentscheidungen privater Haushalte im internationalen Rahmen mit der Konvergenz von Rechnungslegungssystemen. Hierzu betrachtet der Autor zunachst die Investitionsentscheidungen privater Investoren aus einer mikrooekonomischen Perspektive, um darauf aufbauend die Rechnungslegungskonvergenz und ihre positiven Effekte auf internationale Investitionen oekonometrisch mittels des Gravitationsmodells zu untersuchen. Hierbei senken sowohl eine Konvergenz im Bereich des Disclosures als auch des Enforcements die landerubergreifenden Informationskosten und foerdern so internationale Investitionen. Die Untersuchung macht deutlich, dass Disclosure und Enforcement in einer interdependenten Beziehung stehen: So ist die Wirkung der Disclosure-Konvergenz umso starker, je mehr das Enforcement konvergiert.

The international debt crisis that erupted in 1982 threatened the world financial system and turned the 1980s into a lost decade for Latin America. But the crisis jolted governments throughout the region into adopting sweeping economic reforms. By the early 1990s inflation was lower, growth was reviving, the major debtors had reached "Brady Plan" workout agreements reducing bank debt in exchange for collateral, and capital was entering the region in unprecedented magnitudes.This study tries to make sense of this historic financial episode and to derive lessons for future policy. Cline first returns to his 1983 projection models that figured importantly in the debate at that time, and reruns them with the benefit of hindsight to see what went wrong (e.g., capital flight) and what went right (e.g., revival of industrial country growth). He provides a critical survey of the voluminous economics literature that emerged from the debt crisis. The study evaluates performance of the evolving international debt strategy, which eventually succeeded brilliantly in preserving international financial stability and restoring debtor access to credit markets but failed to achieve debtor country growth in the 1980s.The study reviews policy reform and Brady plan results for major Latin American countries; provides new analysis of today's debt problems in Russia and Africa; and analyzes the degree of vulnerability of Latin Americas capital market renaissance to such factors as overvalued exchange rates and a resurgence of US interest rates. It concludes with suggestions for institutional change and policy guidelines to help avoid future crises.