Instead of abolishing internal border controls in 1993, the European Union (EU) replaced them with VAT and statistical requirements that appear to be just as onerous. For Dutch businesses, the compliance costs of the new requirements are, on average, 5 per cent of the value of their intra-EU...

Ten Central and Eastern European countries, as well as Cyprus and Malta, have applied for membership of the European Union. Membership involves, among others, alignment of the taxes on tobacco products. Within the acquis communautaire, accession countries can choose between a predominantly...

The European Commission is evaluating the performance of the common VAT, which has many shortcomings. The numerous exemptions and differentiated rate structures violate the logic and functionality of the VAT. The exemptions distort input choices and outsourcing policies. Reduced rates are...

This paper surveys and evaluates the corporation tax (CT) systems of the Member States of the European Union on the basis of a comprehensive taxonomy of actual and potential regimes, which have as their base either profits, profits and interest, or economic rents. The current regimes give rise...

The euro area will not have a centralised budget and smoothing of country-specific asymmetric shocks via private financial markets will develop only slowly. Mistrust among the governments has caused rigid, even pro-cyclical fiscal policies. Smoothing mechanisms are absent due to the fear that...

The proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and the United States of America would be the largest preferential trade agreement in the world. Encompassing almost half of world GDP, it will have strong economic effects on Germany. In this paper, we...

As economic integration within the European Union (EU) progresses, the interactions between the tax systems of the Member States are of growing importance. Member State tax policies can have spillover effects on other Member States and differing abilities to provide net fiscal benefits to...

In welfare states, collective saving has declined to a persistently negative level, while reduced fertility and increasing longevity are leading to increasing pension liabilities. Actuarial neutrality across generations is presented as a benchmark for designing pension reforms to meet the...