Most tax lawyers are not very fond of tax incentives. When talking about simplifying taxes, an initial approach might be to abolish tax incentives. However, in some cases this abolishment may cause the loss of a useful and effective instrument for government policy. A good example of a policy...

Paper prepared for the 2015 European Association of Tax Law Professors (EATLP) congress. This paper will be included in R. Seer, Surcharges and Penalties in Tax Law, IBFD (expected publication in 2016). The paper discusses tax penalties and surcharges in the Netherlands. It gives an overview of...

In the public debate on taxation, fairness has become a prominent issue over the past few years. In the 1950s legal philosophers have developed a definition of the principle of fairness which focuses on the relationships between tax payers and the expectations they have of each other. It is this...

For a long time, married women were treated differently from married men in the Dutch personal income tax Act (PITA). The PITA reflected the political, religious and legal situation, but at the same time was often behind on developments in those areas. Currently, there is a strong pressure in...

In 2015, Australia's Commonwealth income tax reached its first century. The Income Tax Assessment Act No. 34 of 1915 and accompanying Income Tax Act No. 41 of 1915 were assented to on 13 September 1915, enacted “by the King's Most Excellent Majesty, the Senate, and the House of Representatives...