Americans spend hours every day sitting in traffic. And the roads they idle on are often rough and potholed, their exits, tunnels, guardrails, and bridges in terrible disrepair. According to transportation expert Robert Poole, this congestion and deterioration are outcomes of the way America provides its highways. Our twentieth-century model overly politicizes highway investment decisions, shortchanging maintenance and often investing in projects whose costs exceed their benefits. In Rethinking America's Highways, Poole examines how our current model of state-owned highways came about and why it is failing to satisfy its customers. He argues for a new model that treats highways themselves as public utilities--like electricity, telephones, and water supply. If highways were provided commercially, Poole argues, people would pay for highways based on how much they used, and the companies would issue revenue bonds to invest in facilities people were willing to pay for. Arguing for highway investments to be motivated by economic rather than political factors, this book makes a carefully reasoned and well-documented case for a new approach to highways that is sure to inform future decisions and policies for U.S. infrastructure.

This book answers the question: is Polish property tax legislation ready for the upcoming energy transformation? In Poland, real estate tax (property tax) is a material cost for property owners in energy because of the high value assets used by the sector. At the same time, unclear provisions of Polish tax law and variable jurisprudence can make it challenging for entrepreneurs to predict their tax bills. The current provisions of Polish tax law are often not well adjusted to the reality of modern economy, particularly in the case of assets used in the renewable energy sector. The book describes the problems that face taxpayers, tax authorities, and the administrative courts trying to apply current real estate tax provisions to renewable energy assets. The authors also examine the question of whether Polish legislators treat traditional and renewable sources of energy fairly. The readers of this book will be practitioners and researchers who are interested in issues of renewable energy taxation.

This book is a comprehensive, scholarly account of Hong Kong Public Budgeting, spanning from the pre-1997 British rule to the post-1997 Chinese rule. Transcending the existing comparative budgeting studies which are either central-government focused or symmetric local-government focused, this book presents Hong Kong Public Budgeting as a distinctive case of territorial autonomy. It offers historical and comparative analyses of Hong Kong Public Budgeting, tracing the evolution of budgetary institutions and budgetary decision-making and examining the critical issues of budget openness, budget oversight, and budget allocation. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of comparative budgeting studies. It will also be an excellent text for public budgeting instructors and students in East Asia and Hong Kong.

For many decades consumer protection laws have focused on preventing "bad" choices. Though that approach has some value, this book explains we are much more often harmed, even killed, by the needless delay of new inventions that could save lives or vastly improve life quality. Thomas Tacker explains how we can revamp regulation to embrace inventions that save and improve lives while still holding companies accountable for actions that harm consumers. Case studies include price gouging, the FDA approval process, airport passenger screening, and occupational licensing, particularly as it relates to Uber. This book demonstrates that enacting appropriate liability laws and providing information to guide consumers, rather than strictly controlling their choices, will save thousands of lives annually, increase consumer freedom, and make life more enjoyable.

Passcards provides all the knowledge required for the Indirect Tax unit. Passcards are A6, spiral bound revision aids which students can carry to revise wherever, whenever. Features include:topics presented in the same order as the Course Book, ability to focus on tricky syllabus areas, aid revision by giving clear, visual emphasis to key points, suitable for both paper and computer based exams. Our materials and online equivalents will help ensure you are ready for your assessments and prepared for your career in accounting.

Everyone deserves to be able to retire with dignity, but this core feature of the social contract is in jeopardy. Companies have swerved away from pensions, and most of the workforce has woefully inadequate retirement savings. If we don't act to fix this broken system, rates of impoverishment for senior citizens threaten to skyrocket, and tens of millions of Americans reaching retirement age in the coming decades will be forced to delay retirement and will experience a dramatic drop in their standard of living. In Rescuing Retirement, Teresa Ghilarducci and Tony James offer a comprehensive yet simple plan to help workers save for retirement, increase retirement savings by earning higher returns, and guarantee lifelong income for everyone. Built on people's own money in individual Guaranteed Retirement Accounts, the plan requires no new taxes, no more bureaucracy, and no increase in the deficit. Speaking to Americans' growing anxiety about their ability to retire, Rescuing Retirement provides answers to anyone wanting to understand the growing movement to protect a period of life once considered a deserved time of rest and creativity and offers a practical guide to the future of secure retirement.

Volume 4 in the Critical Issues in Environmental Taxation series provides a peer-reviewed selection of papers on environmental taxation written by experts from around the world. Selected from papers delivered at the Annual Global Conference on Environmental Taxation, they cover the theory of environmental taxation, countries' experiences of specific environmental taxes, proposed environmental taxes, and evaluations of the role of taxation compared with other environmental instruments. The book provides an interdisciplinary approach to environmental taxation, drawing on the fields of economics, law, political science, and accounting. Each volume in the series reflects the theme of the conference from which the papers are drawn, as well as other broader themes. Volume 4 will focus on the role of taxation in promoting renewable energy, but also includes a number of papers on other topics related to environmental taxation. Written predominantly by academics, the papers provide in-depth analysis that will provide a valuable resource to people interested in environmental taxation.

This book provides an analysis of the process and outcomes of the tax reform, with a focus on progressivity, redistribution, and inequality. Between 1977 and 1986, Spain underwent a comprehensive tax reform which shaped its fiscal system until today. It was made in connection with the transition to democracy and indeed was understood as a fundamental part of the political change. The book situates the reform both within Spanish history and international trends in tax systems and connects it to the expansion of the welfare state and regional decentralization in Spain. The analysis reveals that the tax system failed to attain progressivity, and significant levels of fraud had a noticeable impact on inequality. Because of this, fiscal redistribution remained limited. In the new political economy of the second globalization, late democratic and fiscal transitioners were unable to emulate the path of the welfare state forerunners.

In 2005, Americans paid about $2.1 trillion in combined federal taxes, including income, payroll, and excise taxes, or about 16.8 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These taxes fund the services provided by government. As taxpayers, we balance the costs of taxes with the benefits of government. The goal of tax policy is to design a tax system that produces the desired amount of revenue and balances the minimisation of compliance and efficiency costs with other objectives, such as equity, transparency, and administrability. This book examines the detail which is where vested interests do their damage.

Critical Issues in Environmental Taxation is an internationally refereed publication devoted to environmental taxation issues on a worldwide basis. It seeks to provide insights and analysis for achieving environmental goals through tax policy. By sharing the perspectives of the authors in response to the diverse challenges posed by environmental taxation issues, effective approaches used in one country may be considered and possibly implemented by governmental authorities in other countries. This volume (the third in the series) contains 37 articles written by authors from around the world, with the articles grouped into six categories by topic. Preliminary drafts of the articles were presented at the Fifth Annual Global Conference on Environmental Taxation Issues held on September 9-11 2004 in Pavia, Italy. The articles in this volume were selected after being subjected to a rigorous peer review process. The articles are interesting, thought provoking, and have been written by some of the best environmental taxation scholars in the world.

This handbook is a concise guide for all those who aim at obtaining a basic knowledge of European tax law. Designed for students, it should be useful as well for experienced international tax specialists with little knowledge of European law, European law specialists who are reluctant to approach the technicalities of direct taxation and non-Europeans who deal with Europe for business or academic reasons and need to understand the foundations of European tax law. The authors also consider that this book can be useful to academics without a legal background in order to approach the technical issues raised by European Union tax law. During the past two years the growing role of state aids and EU fundamental rights have confirmed the trend that steers them towards having an equivalent impact on direct taxation as compared to the one traditionally had by fundamental freedoms. The developments of secondary law have been more marginal instead, confirming the difficulties in producing secondary legislation on direct taxes. This edition contains selected relevant information available as of 30 June 2020 and retains all of the features and tools contained in the previous editions.

The essential purpose of the tax provisions of the EC Treaty is to contribute to the establishment of a common market that will ensure free trade in goods. The basic principle in this regard is one of non-discrimination between imported and similar or competing domestic goods. This book provides a practical overview of the law in this area and its interpretation and application by the European courts. EU Taxation Law includes detailed analysis of the harmonisation of indirect taxes in the EU, covering principally the substantial body of legislation and case law in the area of value added tax and excise duties, but also discussing company taxation and taxation of savings and royalties. It derives from a section in the looseleaf Law of the EU (Vaughan & Robertson, eds), and is made available here for the benefit of those who don't subscribe to the looseleaf.

Excise taxes on smoking, drinking, gambling, polluting, and driving are always topical and controversial. Not only are these taxes convenient sources of government revenue, they can also be designed to reflect the external costs that consumers or producers of excisable products impose on other people. Global warming, acid rain, traffic congestion, and the economic costs of cigarette and alcohol consumption are problems that can be corrected through selective excise taxes and other regulatory instruments. Excise taxes, moreover, are increasingly looked upon as revenue substitutes for distortionary taxes on capital and labour. Addressing these and other issues, this book by internationally recognized experts analyses the art of excise taxation, providing a systematic, insightful, and often provocative treatment of a major fiscal instrument that policy-makers often neglect, and that gets little attention in the professional literature. It provides a sound understanding, not only of relevant economic theory, but of the myriad institutional details that are crucial for the practical application of that theory.

This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 IGO licence (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO). It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. As their Millennium Development Goals, world leaders have pledged by 2015 to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty and hunger, to achieve universal primary education, to reduce child mortality, to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS, and to halve the number of people without safe drinking water. Achieving these goals requires a large increase in the flow of financial resources to developing countries - double the present development assistance from abroad. Examining innovative ways to secure these resources, this book sets out a framework for the economic analysis of different sources of funding, applying the tools of modern public economics to identify the key issues. It examines the role of new sources of overseas aid, considers the fiscal architecture and the lessons that can be learned from federal fiscal systems, asks how far increased transfers impose a burden on donors, and investigates how far one can separate raising resources from their use. In turn, the book examines global environmental taxes (such as a carbon tax) the taxation of currency transactions (the Tobin tax), a development-focused allocation of Special Drawing Rights by the IMF, the UK Government proposal for an International Finance Facility, increased private donations for development purposes, a global lottery (or premium bond), and increased remittances by emigrants. In each case, it considers the feasibility of the proposal and the resources that it can realistically raise. In each case, it offers new perspectives and insights into these new and controversial proposals.

Tax practitioners are unfamiliar with tax theory. Tax economists remain unfamiliar with tax law and tax administration. Most textbooks relate mainly to the US, UK or European experiences. Students in emerging economies remain unfamiliar with their own taxation history. This textbook fills those gaps. It covers the concept of taxes in regards to their rationale, principles, design, and common errors. It addresses distortions in consumer choices and production decisions caused by tax and redressals. The main principles of taxation-efficiency, equity, stabilization, revenue productivity, administrative feasibility, international neutrality-are presented and discussed. The efficiency principle requires the minimisation of distortions in the market caused by tax. Equity in taxation is another principle that is maintained through progressivity in the tax structure. Similarly, other principles have their own ramifications that are also addressed. A country's constitutional specification of tax assignment to different levels of government-central, state, municipal-are elaborated. The UK is more centralised than the US and India. India has amended its constitution to introduce a goods and services tax (GST) covering both central and state governments. Drafting of tax law is crucial for clarity and this aspect is addressed. Furthermore, the author illustrates different types of taxes such as individual income tax, corporate income tax, wealth tax, retail sales/value added/goods and services tax, selective excises, property tax, minimum taxes such as the minimum alternate tax (MAT), cash-flow tax, financial transactions tax, fringe benefits tax, customs duties and export taxes, environment tax and global carbon tax, and user charges. An emerging concern regarding the inadequacy of international taxation of multinational corporations is covered in some detail. Structural aspects of tax administration are given particular attention.

This book highlights China's engagement with Africa through trade, investment and financial linkages. Its three main goals are as follows: firstly, to provide insights into Chinese FDI in Africa, by exploring a range of infrastructural projects and several countries' historical, geographical, socio-political, cultural and economic backgrounds; secondly, to present the main double taxation treaties with Beijing and country profiles of the African economies; and lastly, to provide a valuable business guide for recognizing and capitalizing on new opportunities in Afro-Eurasia.

Documenting the evolution of economic development and fiscal policies in Taiwan over the last four decades, this work explores the effectiveness of specific tax and trade policies. The authors make a major revision to the previously accepted role played by the export processing zones and the protection of domestic producers from foreign competition. The extensive use of duty exemption systems enabled the government to create competition among the exporting firms, and the innovative design of economic policies and administrative systems helped the private sector generate savings, expand investments, and promote exports.

This work analyzes how unique fiscal policies and administrative practices were designed to foster the rapid growth and development of Taiwan during this period.

This title is part of a series dealing with all aspects of taxation, including tax policy and issues at the federal, state, local, or international level. The series primarily publishes empirical studies that address compliance, computer usage, education, legal, planning, or policy issues.

International Commercial Tax, 2nd edition takes account of the substantial developments of the last decade. With more than sixty percent new material, the book considers the outcomes of the OECD's BEPS project and the substantial consequential 2017 revisions of the OECD and UN Model tax treaties. With the continuing rise in the economic importance of non-OECD countries and the UK distancing itself from the EU, there has been a refocusing with less direct attention on UK domestic law and greater focus on the approaches of other significant countries, especially other common law jurisdictions. This provides greater flexibility as to how a particular point or issue is illustrated with practical examples. Greater attention is given to the UN Model, which is increasingly important. The book continues to compare the approach under model tax treaties with EU law and is updated with copious references and illustrations from the burgeoning jurisprudence of the EU Court.

Tax policies are informed by principles developed in the tax theory and policy literature. This Element surveys the policy lessons that emerge from optimal tax analysis since the 1970s. This Element begins with the evolution of tax policy principles from the comprehensive income approach to the expenditure tax approach to normative tax analysis based on social welfare maximization and recounts key results from the optimal income tax analysis inspired by Mirrlees and extended by Diamond to the extensive margin approach. This Element also emphasizes analytical techniques that yield empirically relevant concepts and show the equity-efficiency trade-off at the heart of tax policy. We also extend the analysis to recent literature incorporating involuntary unemployment, and policies like welfare and unemployment insurance.

What constitutes a good life? For most people, well-being involves more than a high income or material prosperity alone. Many non-material aspects, such as health, family life, living environment, job quality and the meaningful use of time are at least as important. Together, these factors also influence the degree to which people are satisfied with their lives, and help to determine how happy they feel. This book argues that happiness and life satisfaction do not form a good basis for measuring well-being, and proposes an alternative method that not only considers the various aspects of well-being, but also the fact that people have their own views on what is important in life. Not limited just to theory, the book also presents a large-scale, representative survey involving more than 3000 adults from over 2000 Belgian families, which charted the various aspects of the individual well-being of Belgians. Focusing on the unequal distribution of these various aspects of well-being within families, the survey showed that some Belgians are more likely to suffer from cumulative deprivation in multiple dimensions. Based on this innovative study, the book describes which people in society are worst off - and these are not necessarily only people on low incomes or those who feel unhappy - and proposes that policymakers prioritise these individuals.

When thirteen machine shop workers from Ohio won a $295.7 million lotto jackpot, the largest ever, it made headlines. But the real story is that the lottery is a losing proposition for the vast majority who play it.

Hitting the Lottery Jackpot provides the hard truth to the questions everybody asks: What are my chances of winning? Doesn't the money go to education? Isn't it harmless? This concise book explains who really profits from lotteries-advertising agencies, TV stations, and ticket vendors-and that shows only about half the money wagered is returned as prizes, the rest pocketed by state governments. Hitting the Lottery Jackpot also demonstrates who loses: lower-income groups and people of color, who spend a much higher percentage of their income on lotteries than others.

David Nibert connects the rise of lotteries, illegal in every state before the 1960s, to the economic stagnation beginning in the 1970s, when budgetary crises prompted legislatures to seek new revenues. Difficult economic times produced uncertainty and anxiety for the working class, leading many poor and middle-income people, yearning for security, to throw away huge sums on lotteries they stand almost no chance of winning. Finally, Nibert explores the ideological dimensions of the lottery-the get-rich-quick individualism that they promote among the very groups who would be better served by political action and solidarity.

Hitting the Lottery Jackpot is a powerful case for seeing lotteries as a pernicious government tax on the poor, seductively disguised as fun.

This collection of 20 essays examines the merits of land-value taxation and distinguishes it from the conventional property tax because it has a more benign economic influence. It includes four essays by William S. Vickrey, the 1996 Nobel laureate in economics.