Taxes

Advocates of redistribution often reckon that soaking the rich would eliminate poverty. Consider the following: the 10 largest fortunes in France amount to 14 per cent of GDP, or 272 billion euros. If we imagine a one-off redistribution of this wealth to the 8.2 officially poor, the sum awarded to each would be some 33,000 euros. Not bad, but certainly not enough to retire on.

How far should redistribution go? Who should pay for it and how? What is the proper role of the State and what is better left to private initiative? Should insolvent banks be bailed-out? Is it better to tax individuals when they consume or as soon as they earn their income? Should we rely on taxation to bent individuals’ behaviour towards a cleaner, safer life (sin taxes and fat taxes)? Every one has—or should have—an opinion on those important questions.

Minimum sanctions for tax crimes, a cross-border tax identification number, an EU tax-payer’s charter and stronger common measures against tax havens are some of the measures proposed by the Commission in a recently edited press release.

Starting July 1, French taxpayers will have to pay an extra 2% on top of the “Generalized Social Contribution” that was so far set at 13.5%. This brings the new rate of the General Social Contribution on labor and capital incomes to 15.5%.

This paper is excerpted from the forthcoming “IREF’s Yearbook on Taxation” 2012

On July 6 the Berlusconi government passed a first package of mandating modest immediate cuts in the expenditure and similarly modest immediate increases in tax revenue to address concerns on the capacity of Italy to serve its huge public debt. Because this was not enough to reassure markets, the government had to pass a second, more substantial, package of fiscal measures on August 13. Despite those packages and the drafting of a constitutional amendment requiring balanced budgets, Berlusconi’s government had to go off the stage and the new Monti’s team immediately introduced a third package. As a result, Italy probably never experienced since the tax reform of the 1970’s such a huge number of changes in its tax system. Changes refer both to the introduction of new taxes and to modification of tax rates and of the tax base of the present taxes.

This paper is excerpted from the forthcoming “IREF’s Yearbook on Taxation” 2012

In view of the great fragility of French public finances, all the candidates to the April 2012 Presidential elections have felt the necessity to explain their strategy to put the country back on track, if elected. As a result, fiscal policy has attracted more public attention than rarely ever in the past. Although propositions seem to vary substantially from one candidate to the other, standing back they pretty much come down to the same two-tier plan: (1) cut some taxes here and raise some there so that the net balance is zero and (2) cut some public expenses here and increase some there so that net balance is zero or slightly positive (small reduction in public deficit). In short, no substantial reform, neither in the field of taxation or in the field of public expenditures, is to be expected. This, some say, is justified by the desire to save the country from recession (GDP is expected to stagnate during the first quarter of 2012 and to grow by 0.2% in the second quarter). Keynesianism is still popular there: A strategy that displays a great deal of stubbornness if we recall that France has already one of the highest levels of public expenditures in the world.

EU Parliament had been calling for a financial transaction tax (FTT) for nearly two years and, unsurprisingly, it has adopted last week the proposal drafted by the Commission. One of the arguments that prevailed in the debate that took place at the Parliament and resulted in the adoption of the financial transaction tax proposal was that “the FTT is an integral part of an exit from crisis. It will bring a fairer distribution of the weight of the crisis” (rapporteur Anni Podimata).

The free-market view is in general in favour of decentralization. By and large, the rationale behind this claim is that decentralized taxation and spending imply greater accountability for politicians and public officials. In turn, greater accountability generates less corruption and better services to the community. The authors of this paper suggest that this claim needs to be taken with caution, since the quality of the local institutions significantly affects the outcome of fiscal decentralization (spending performance).

According to the Tax Foundation, this year U.S. citizens will pay more than $4 trillion in total federal, state and local taxes. That sum “is $152 billion, or 3.9%, more than they will spend on housing, food, and clothing combined. The data shows that from 1929 to 1980 tax liabilities grew from $10 billion to $751 billion. But expenditures on housing, food, and clothing still was more than that final sum, growing from $41.6 billion to $775.7 billion.

The UK Peers have attacked plans by the European Commission for a Europe-wide financial transaction tax, warning that if introduced, the UK could account for 71% of the revenue it would raise. It is unclear, they said, why the financial sector should be targeted, and the FTT proposal’s reversal of the trend towards horizontal measures is rendering it inappropriate as an EU revenue source.