The paper comments on the introduction of a final withholding tax on certain forms of capital income in Austria in the early nineties. Economic and legal problems of the reform measures are discussed and they* are appraised as policy responses to weak points of the traditional comprehensive...

The child tax allowance and the basic tax allowance of the German income tax system have been declared by the Federal Constitutional Court as too low and thus unconstitutional. Against this background this paper provides a survey of tax instruments in OECD countries which secure tax-exemption...