Taxes

In recent years the issue of how much taxes corporations pay (and how much they should) has become extremely salient in Western countries. The attention to this issue has been…

On Monday the 6th of June 2016 an IREF workshop in cooperation with St. Mary’s University took place in London. International academic presenters gave talks on their recent research articles,…

In less than a month, UK voters will be asked to express their intention to leave the EU in a referendum. The UK Prime Minister David Cameroon has strongly argued…

Back in 2014, several European countries started including the revenues from drugs and prostitution into their national accounting systems. These two sectors have several characteristics in common. First, the consumption…

WP 2016-03. The paper has now been published and can be accessed here. After the end of communism, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe shared very similar challenges. Despite…

WP 2016-02. Most of the literature on rent-seeking and the size of government expenditure has focused on the mechanisms through which policy-makers gather the necessary majorities to justify and expand…

WP 2016-01. The traditional literature on tax evasion frames taxpayers’ choices in terms of rather basic cost-benefit analyses involving the expected monetary return to tax evasion. Briefly put, individuals take…

The Nobel-Laureate Douglass North passed away at the end of November. Though he didn’t specialise in fiscal questions, his analysis of institutions in early modern Europe reveals that actual fiscal choices about how to finance an army help to determine the fortunes and falls of European powers. The lesson for today is clear – fiscal size may be important, but it is equally important to consider how it is raised.

Switzerland may be known for low taxes, but that does not prevent it from redistributing them; richer regions subsidise the poorer ones. Now at least one paying canton is starting to protest against the arrangement. There really is a big difference between how much taxpayers in different cantons pay for (or receive from) others. But somewhat surprisingly, there is hardly any “freeriding”: subsidised cantons do not use the subsidy to lower their own tax revenues. “Race to the bottom” that most EU politicians like to fear is therefore little to be feared.

The UK government has been watching Jamie Oliver’s TV shows and now wants to implement his plans for a new tax on sugar. The Commons‘ Health Committee has reported its overwhelming support for the idea at the end of November. Other than arguments that such taxes are “good per se“ because they will decrease obesity, most serious justifications invoke the idea that the tax would be a just way of raising extra money for the health service tasked with treating the consequences of obesity. Unfortunately, neither goal would likely be achieved through a sugar tax.