This study examines factors that determine business people’s attitudes towards paying taxes in Ethiopia. Based on data obtained from a survey of business taxpayers in Addis Ababa, the study finds a statistically significant relation between tax-compliance attitude and factors such as the perception of probability of audit, corruption, satisfaction with the tax administration, peer influence,…
Read moreA major international effort – the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative aims to reduce the extent of misalignment between the profits of multinational groups, and the location of their real economic activity. Recent research using balance sheet data has shown major misalignments, with a number of small jurisdictions capturing a tax base…
Read moreThis paper considers the merits of a price-based royalty, a royalty for which the rate varies with the product price, as a fiscal instrument for taxing extractive industries. In light of the literature on natural resources taxation, the case for a price-based royalty is appealing. A price-based royalty captures some of the desirable attributes of…
Read moreThis paper argues that global corporate tax policies have long been dominated by a political consensus among governments of countries at all levels of economic development, to the effect that forces of tax competition render taxation of the cross-border income of multinational companies both infeasible and unwise. Current tax laws around the world, which permit…
Read moreGovernments that lack the capacity to mine resources themselves have to attract foreign direct investment. However, since resources are not renewable countries need to capture a ‘fair’ share of mineral resource rent to promote their development. While the sharp rise of the world prices of most minerals (in particular, gold, copper, iron and bauxite) multiplied…
Read moreMuch contemporary economic growth in Africa is driven by urban service sectors including construction and real estate. This manifests in rapidly transforming landscapes and the proliferation of valuable property in the continent’s booming large cities, often accompanied by growing socio-economic inequality. In this context, improving systems for property taxation is an urgent and growing need…
Read moreIt is now widely believed that taxation contributes to the quality of governance. There are a number of variants of the broad argument. The most general proposition is that, if governments are dependent on broad general taxation for their incomes, they will, for reasons of self-interest, be more responsive to the needs of their citizens…
Read moreThis paper evaluates the efforts of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in its project on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), to control profit shifting by members of multinational groups through payments of interest on related-party loans. Currently, members of groups appear be shifting large amounts of income from countries around the…
Read moreThis paper analyses whether a global unitary taxation approach to corporate income tax (CIT) can improve the ability of governments to design and administer efficient and effective tax and royalty policies for the extractive industries. Drawing upon experience with unitary approaches to corporate income taxation of the extractive sectors in subnational taxation systems of the…
Read moreFor more than twenty years there have been discussions on the issue of multinational corporations shifting profits from high- to low-tax jurisdictions, with resulting gains to them from the resulting reduction in their effective tax rate. Underpinning much of this debate has been an implicit assumption that, first of all, profits are a fixed and…
Read moreThis paper is based on a detailed analysis of how field staff in the Excise and Taxation Department of the Punjab Provincial Government collect the (very low-yielding) property tax. In general, informal practices and relationships play a major role. More specifically, field staff enjoy considerable discretion in making key decisions about property tax assessment; the…
Read moreThe author offers a retrospective analysis of his recently-completed extensive research on the technical feasibility of international formulary apportionment of corporate taxable income, as a replacement for the body of ‘arm’s-length’ transfer pricing rules generally in use around the world. In this retrospective analysis the author considers recent analytical work on base erosion and profit…
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