To operate efficiently and effectively revenue authorities require discretion, but processes must be in place to keep discretion in check. This delicate balancing act takes place against the background of a more general constitutional framework. This chapter outlines the unique features of the...

This article identifies and discusses some commonly made claims about the EU Commission's proposed FTT: (i) ordinary citizens and businesses will hardly be affected by the FTT, (ii) the proposed FTT is a “small tax”, (iii) the financial sector is under-taxed, (iv) high-frequency trading...

In September 2011 the EU Commission put forward a proposal for an EU-wide Financial Transaction Tax. This article assesses the proposal. It starts by looking at the design of the tax before moving on to the objectives it is meant to achieve. Two questions are asked in relation to each objective:...

This paper presents, analyses, and further develops the idea of a destination-based cash-flow tax (DBCFT). Its purpose is expositional: to describe the DBCFT, how it might work, what its effects would be and some of the challenges that its implementation would face. The paper starts by...

This paper is a draft chapter of a forthcoming book on the taxation of international business profit by the authors of this paper, to be published by Oxford University Press. The group has been meeting regularly for five years, to identify and discuss the key problems of the existing...

The most significant problems with the existing system for taxing the profit of multinational companies stem from two related sources. First, the underlying “1920s compromise” for allocating the rights to tax profit between countries is both inappropriate and increasingly hard to implement...

In the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, a large number of countries have introduced levies on bank borrowing with the aim of reducing risk in the financial sector. This paper studies the behavioral responses to the bank levies and finds that banks exposed to levies increased their...