IREF

Abstract: Wealth taxes are portrayed as being fair, and a rather painless way to increase funding for strapped government programs. So then, why should we consider wealth taxes? To what extent are these taxes a matter of justice and to what extent are these taxes a matter of economics? Are wealth taxes harmful or helpful to an economy? Are wealth taxes fair obligations belonging to the entrepreneur or unjust claims made by society? To answer these questions we will proceed as follows: First, we will analyze the arguments given to justify wealth taxation.

The model presented in the paper leads us to predict that the level of redistribution will be all the more important where the jurisdictions have been able to shelter themselves…

The median-voter hypothesis has been central to an extensive literature on the relationship between income inequality and public income redistribution. Knowing that the real-world market income distributions are skewed to the right, a majority of individuals earns an income that is strictly lower than the mean; the economic theory of democracy predicts a radical redistribution in favour of the poor and middle class. But a large empirical literature looking at explicit redistributive social transfers shows that it is rather the exception than the norm.

By drawing on the median voter model, George Stigler (1970) provided a theoretical basis for the alleged empirical regularity found by Aaron Director that income redistribution runs from the poor and the rich to the middle classes. The median voter model is however only applicable to describe modern representative democracies under relatively strong and unrealistic assumptions, which makes alternative equilibria of income redistribution equally plausible.

A psychological tax contract goes beyond the traditional deterrence model and explains tax morale as a complicated interaction between taxpayers and the government. As a contractual relationship implies duties and rights for each contract party, tax compliance is increased by sticking to the fiscal exchange paradigm between citizens and the state. Citizens are willing to honestly declare income even if they do not receive a full public good equivalent to tax payments as long as the political process is perceived to be fair and legitimate.

The system of taxation of corporate profits, introduced in 2000 in Estonia, is unique. Under this system the reinvested profit is not taxed, only the distributed profit is taxed. Thus,…

Abstract: However much may set apart Hobbes and Locke, these two progenitors of our modern intellectual tradition are in full agreement on one cardinal point, namely “that civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniencies of the state of nature, which must certainly be great.” For anyone impressed with the arguments of these two and many other great thinkers, taxes must appear as more than “what we pay for civilized society”, as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously put it. Taxes are what we pay for living in any kind of lasting peace and security at all.

Introduction: There is by now a huge and rapidly expanding- literature on endogenous growth’. In this literature certain ingredients ‘enter the production function’- that is contribute to the generation of…

Abstract: It has been observed that while the respective theoretical merits of fiscal centralisation and decentralisation are debatable, it is even more difficult to empirically assess the degree of centralisation…

Abstract: The idea to compare the fiscal decentralisation and trends in this respect in the European countries is a core for the IREF project. This means that the strict rules of measurement of this complex issue, as fiscal decentralisation is, should be applied to all fiscal systems. Therefore I will follow the description how to generate the index of fiscal decentralisation invented and provided by the prof. Garello and Price . Nevertheless I will also describe and analyze problems which I have met when adopted this scheme into the Polish fiscal system.