This paper examines the trade-offs between tax autonomy and fiscal neutrality that the Member States of the European Union face in coordinating their taxes on consumption, labor and capital. One of the main messages is that in many cases tax reform should precede tax harmonization, mainly...

The sixteen essays in this book were written to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of Richard Musgrave and to commemorate the tenth anniversary of CES, the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Munich. Musgrave is considered to be a founding father of modern public economics. He belongs...

Later this year, the European Commission has to submit a report to the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament with its views on tobacco tax policy in the EU. A 2004 publication issued by the Commission expressed the beliefs that tobacco consumption should be controlled by increasing...

As economic integration within the European Union (EU) progresses, the interactions between the tax systems of the Member States are of growing importance. Member State tax policies can have spillover effects on other Member States and differing abilities to provide net fiscal benefits to...

Smoking is the single largest cause of avoidable death in the European Union accounting for over half a million deaths each year. One in ten of all 11-year olds have been drunk twice or more times, possibly causing lasting physical and mental harm. Electronic gaming machines are the crack...

The Netherlands has abolished the tax on actual personal capital income and has replaced it by a presumptive capital income tax, which is in fact a net wealth tax. This paper contrasts this wealth tax with a conventional realization-based capital gains tax, a retrospective capital gains tax with...

In 1992, the Ruding Committee, appointed by the European Commission to examine the need for company tax (CT) harmonisation in the European Union (EU), presented its findings and recommendations.2 Although the Committee concluded that differences in CTs distort the workings of the internal market...