This Handbook entry presents a conceptual, normative overview of the subject of taxation. It emphasizes the relationships among the main functions of taxation—notably, raising revenue, redistributing income, and correcting externalities—and the mapping between these functions and various...

This article asks whether tax planning advice can ever be effectively regulated by the IRS. The article first explores whether tax advice differs in kind from other forms of legal advice. Secondly, it looks at the clear regulatory distinction between the treatment of return preparation advice...

In economies with Ramsey taxation, decreasing returns to scale, and private ownership, we show that second-best production efficiency is desirable when profit tax rates vary across groups of firms provided that the institutional rules which define profit incomes of consumers depend on the...

The multinationalization of corporate investment in recent years has given rise to a number of international tax avoidance schemes that may be eroding tax revenues in industrialized countries, but which may also reduce tax burdens on mobile capital and so facilitate investment. Both the welfare...

In 1992, the Treasury Department proposed a comprehensive business income tax, or CBIT, as a reform option for the taxation of business income. In Treasury's proposal, all taxes on business income (including income of sole proprietorships) would be replaced by a flat, entity-level tax. Interest...

This study examines the effect of three measures of corporate social responsibility (CSR) — corporate governance, community and diversity on tax avoidance in firms that use auditor‐provided tax services. This is one of the first studies, to our knowledge, to empirically relate tax avoidance,...