This is the amount of increase of the French public debt from 2008 to 2009. It represents 10 GDP points. While making a lot of noise about the 22 billion…
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This is the number of US government regulatory agencies for financial services before the 2008 crisis, according to Prof. Laurence Kotlikoff’s most recent book, Jimmy Stewart is Dead. Obviously, the…
This is the estimation of lost output for every dollar of government spending that made the University of Chicago’s professor Harald Uhlig in a paper published by the American Economic…
The Negative Consequences of Government Expenditure – Jeffrey Miron, Mercatus Center, 2010
Does Government Spending Stimulate Economies? – Veronique de Rugy & Jakina Debnam, Mercatus Center, 2010
This is the payroll tax paid on wages in Greece. 28% of it is born by employers and 16% by employees. It is not surprising that the unemployment rate in…
69% is the annual growth estimated by Standard and Poor’s, one of the leading agencies for ratings. This is the sharpest rise of S&P 500 index (which is estimating the…
Because of the “Tobin Tax”, Professor James Tobin has involuntary become the spearhead of numerous anti-mondialist organizations. A tax synonymous of “compulsory charity” from “rich” (countries) (executing several billions of financial transactions) to “poor” (countries) (victims of the “law of the strongest”). The principle is a systematical taxation of all financial transactions. A simple and ethical principle? It is not that obvious… Numerous scientifical voices clearly explain why this kind of project is not applicable. First of all, such a principle implies an unanimous understanding between countries all over the world; if not, some new “Fiscal Eden” can appears. Next, who can prevent a government to increase the tax rate as high as it wants, even if this destabilizes all exchanges? James Tobin himself explains that some organizations have highjacked his name and his scientifical production to try to defend their ideals.
The tale tells that Arthur B. Laffer sketched his famous curve on a napkin during a lunch with Jude Wanniski, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. At that time, he surely did not imagine the renown that will follow this day of December 1974. The Laffer curve relates for each tax rate the expected total tax revenues. For low rates, tax rate and tax revenues move in the same way. But, as rates increase, this relation works in the opposite direction: higher tax rate produces smaller tax revenues. Hence, beyond this “maximum tax rate” the disincentive” effect of taxation is overwhelming. Nonetheless, this maximum rate is not empirically defined: it depends on place, time, circumstances, etc. The following file does not pretend to be exhaustive. Its goal is to introduce key arguments about Laffer Curve.
The existence of tax havens is more than ever a subject of controversy. While the European Union, as well as the USA and the OECD countries are trying to put pressure on the governments of States considered as tax havens, the understanding of what is at stake is becoming more and more obscure. We are trying here to help you to form an objective opinion about this issue.
You can find here links of interest on wordwide taxation and international comparisions.