Businesses both pay taxes and collect them from others for the government. How administratively burdensome is this activity across the EU, North American and EFTA? We assess the evidence and identify, whether it is the frequency of filing or complicated tax returns that matter.
Taxes
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled last Thursday that e-books are not allowed to enjoy the lower VAT that “normal” books enjoy in some EU states, and that they have to be taxed at the standard (much higher) rate of other goods. The ECJ’s justification sounds strange and very counter-intuitive. Worse still, it discourages technological progress and greener methods of production.
If you are playing for time, you have to swamp your creditors with proposals how you are going to improve. “This time it’ll work, honest, guv.” So the Greek government is now proposing a secret tax police, where ordinary citizens would be wired with cameras and microphones to catch tax evaders. It’s a terrible idea, especially when there are easier alternatives.
The French government is hoping to help consumers – and increase growth – by making it illegal to manufacture products with artificially shortened lifetime. We argue that proving such case will be nearly impossible in modern technology and the ban will act as a tax, with consequences even worse than the status quo. If governments want to artificially boost production, they should in fact subsidise products with shortened lifetime, instead of banning them.
9 EU countries have not adopted the Euro, 19 have. Both groups include similar proportions of countries with high, medium and low levels of economic freedom. However, IREF’s investigation of what has been happening to economic freedom in the two groups reveals significant differences. While non-Euro countres moved towards more fiscally related freedom, in Eurozone it stagnated or declined.
WP 2015-01. Executive Summary Does progressive taxation on corporate income discourage entrepreneurship? At first glance, the answer seems in the positive, since as tax pressure on business increases, business activities…
Free movement of people, capital, goods and services across national borders. Those are, allegedly, the pillars of European integration. One of them, the free movement of capital, crossed swords twice…
“In order to prevent tax fraud, income tax withholding should be increased so that governments over-withhold and most taxpayers receive a refund.” This is the policy prescription in a new research about to be published. We argue that this conclusion is wrong. The authors have not proven the link between tax withholding and tax fraud, and even if, increased tax withholding creates more serious problems that would wipe out any anti-fraud benefits. Tax policy should not rely on fooling people.
Every month, the EU Commision starts dozens of legal actions against Member States for non-compliance with EU law. We evaluate the November crop of fiscally-related cases. While 2 such actions are generally a good idea, 4 are a bad idea, reducing EU citizens’ opportunities for an efficient and transparent government.
Tax cuts are pretty rare in the real world. When they do happen, they tend to be very partial, offering unjust advantages to a specific group. But even broader tax cuts can paradoxically do much harm. Using Italy as an example, this piece argues that when tax cuts lead to greater debt, they may ultimately curtail rather than enhance liberty – and long run economic growth?