This paper discusses the issue of profit shifting and 'aggressive' tax planning by multinational firms. The paper makes two contributions. Firstly, we provide some background information to the debate by giving a brief overview over existing empirical studies on profit shifting and by describing...

Nigeria is governed by a federal system, hence its fiscal operations also adhere to the same principle, a fact which has serious implications on how the tax system is managed. The country’s tax system is lopsided, and dominated by oil revenue. It is also characterized by unnecessarily complex,...

Tax reform is a permanent topic of the economic policy debate in Germany. The paper presents a radical reform proposal (as well as a survey of other proposals) and describes some steps towards the realization of the proposal. The tax system proposed mainly consists of a value added tax, a flat...

In August 2009 the Congressional Budget Offi ce warned that the budget was on an unsustainable path. Preventing federal debt from growing faster than the economy over the long-run requires large increases in revenues and/or decreases in spending. We explore, using the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy...

Using a panel of 97 mostly developing and transitional countries for the period 1990-2011, this paper explores fiscal implications of membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Em-ploying robust difference-in-difference specifications as well as semi-parametric methods, we find that...

Public spending will play the decisive role in the reconstruction of Ukraine, in rendering aid to the population, providing emergency services, reconstructing infrastructure and driving industrial development in the coming years. For economic recovery and sustainable development in the post-war...

Die "Erzbergerschen Steuer- und Finanzreformen" 1919/20 haben die öffentlichen Finanzen grundlegend umgestaltet. Die gesamtwirtschaftliche Steuerbelastung verdoppelte sich und stieg bis Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs weiter. Seit den 1950er Jahren bewegt sie sich meist zwischen 22 bis 24 Prozent...

This paper presents a tax reform proposal on consumption in Brazil. The basic idea is to add several taxes in a single Value Added Tax (VAT). Unlike the other proposals, which suggest a strategy automatically encompassing all federated entities, our study suggests a dual and modular reform based...

The tax and fiscal reforms headed by German finance minister Matthias Erzberger in 1919 and 1920 fundamentally reshaped German public finances. The total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, or tax-to-GDP ratio, doubled and increased continually until the end of World War II. Since the 1950s, the...

This paper presents an evaluation of the tax-transfer treatment of married couples in 15 EU countries using the EUROMOD microsimulation model. First, we show that many tax-transfer schemes in Europe feature negative jointness defined as a situation where the tax rate on one person depends...