Paying taxes is a cost of doing business. The looters (or public servants, depending on your perspective) must be paid and tax proceeds must be distributed to various groups and individuals, both worthy and unworthy. But tax expense includes more than just the amount of taxes that must be paid....

In 1944, Martin Crowe, a Catholic priest, wrote a doctoral dissertation titled The Moral Obligation of Paying Just Taxes. His dissertation summarized and analyzed 500 years of theological and philosophical debate on this topic, which identified three basic philosophical positions on the issue....

Countries that are moving from central planning to a market economy face unique problems in many areas, including taxation and public finance. The methods of collecting the revenue needed to fund government services were much different under a socialist system. Shifting to a market system...

The Panama Papers refers to a massive leak of information encompassing more than 11 million documents involving more than 200,000 offshore entities. The leak originated in Panama. Some of the documents involve transactions as far back as the 1970s. Numerous wealthy individuals, including top...

Each year the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal publish the Index of Economic Freedom. This major study compiles economic data on more than 150 countries. The compilers divide the data into ten categories, ranging from business freedom to labor freedom. One of the ten categories is...

The Panama Papers refers to a massive leak of information encompassing more than 11 million documents involving more than 200,000 offshore entities. The leak originated in Panama. Some of the documents involve transactions as far back as the 1970s. Numerous wealthy individuals, including top...

Tax systems have become increasingly complex in recent decades. There is no such thing as a single tax. There are individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, sometimes local income taxes. There are a variety of indirect taxes, such as the value added tax (VAT), various kinds of excise...