One of the more contentious issues within the European Union (EU) in recent years has been how Member States should organise their taxation infrastructures. The European Union Savings Tax Directive (EUSTD) was one of a series of initiatives with an EU-wide focus on taxation since the issue of...

This paper considers the dilemmas associated with the regulation of offshore finance centres under conditions of late-modern capitalism and a world economy that is shaped increasingly by the pressures of globalisation. Since the early 1970s factors such as: rapid developments in information...

Future increases to the top income tax rates for individuals and reductions to the corporate tax rate will invite the widespread use of C corporations as tax shelter vehicles, an old problem that has never been addressed successfully. The changes could even resurrect the need for the...

The aim of this article is to evaluate the prevalence and distribution in the European Union of a little discussed illegitimate employment practice whereby employers pay their formal employees both an official declared salary and an undeclared ‘envelope' wage so as to evade the full tax and...

To evaluate critically the policy options available for tackling the undeclared economy, this paper commences by evaluating the implications of four hypothetical policy choices, namely doing nothing, de-regulating the declared economy, eradicating the undeclared economy, or moving undeclared...

The aim of this article is to evaluate competing theories that variously explain the greater prevalence of envelope wages in some countries either as: a legacy of underdevelopment (modernisation thesis); due to high taxes, state corruption and burdensome regulations and controls (neo-liberal...

The aim of this article is to evaluate the competing theories that variously explain the greater prevalence of undeclared employment in some countries either as: a legacy of under-development; a result of the voluntary exit from declared employment due to the high taxes, state corruption and...