161 research outputs found
The missing element:Moral culture
A company’s moral culture is key to its moral performance and is a prerequisite for the creation of sustainable value over the long term. The management board is responsible for creating a healthy moral culture. Communication about the ways this culture is promoted and reinforced enables stakeholders to hold the board to account. Companies already communicate their values, but stakeholders want to know how these values are translated into practice. How do they inform a company's tax strategy and its (major) concrete decisions? What kinds of problems are perceived as tax dilemmas from a moral point of view, that is, from the set of moral values endorsed by the company? Transparency’s educational function allows stakeholders to gain more insight into a company's moral tax culture and may provide companies with valuable feedback. More information is needed about organisational values and the ensuing practices to enable stakeholders to assess companies’ tax behaviour. Governance codes could pay more attention to this issue to help companies to transpire ethical tax behaviour as part of their governance.VBDO’s Tax Transparency Benchmark regards corporate tax governance. The benchmark could perhaps also take ethical tax behaviour on board. A new principle could then be fleshed out with several criteria that refer to the main aspects of management and control, responsibility and influence, and supervision and accountability of tax behaviour from a moral point of view. They would formulate what a healthy organisational moral culture and good practice would look like; how are the company’s moral values applied in tax practice? These criteria would be like the tone at the top, supporting and stimulating moral learning and development, encouraging criticism and voicing rival points of view, identifying and discussing moral dilemmas and possible blind spots, and accounting for stakeholder perspectives on ethical tax behaviour.<br/
The missing element:Moral culture
A company’s moral culture is key to its moral performance and is a prerequisite for the creation of sustainable value over the long term. The management board is responsible for creating a healthy moral culture. Communication about the ways this culture is promoted and reinforced enables stakeholders to hold the board to account. Companies already communicate their values, but stakeholders want to know how these values are translated into practice. How do they inform a company's tax strategy and its (major) concrete decisions? What kinds of problems are perceived as tax dilemmas from a moral point of view, that is, from the set of moral values endorsed by the company? Transparency’s educational function allows stakeholders to gain more insight into a company's moral tax culture and may provide companies with valuable feedback. More information is needed about organisational values and the ensuing practices to enable stakeholders to assess companies’ tax behaviour. Governance codes could pay more attention to this issue to help companies to transpire ethical tax behaviour as part of their governance.VBDO’s Tax Transparency Benchmark regards corporate tax governance. The benchmark could perhaps also take ethical tax behaviour on board. A new principle could then be fleshed out with several criteria that refer to the main aspects of management and control, responsibility and influence, and supervision and accountability of tax behaviour from a moral point of view. They would formulate what a healthy organisational moral culture and good practice would look like; how are the company’s moral values applied in tax practice? These criteria would be like the tone at the top, supporting and stimulating moral learning and development, encouraging criticism and voicing rival points of view, identifying and discussing moral dilemmas and possible blind spots, and accounting for stakeholder perspectives on ethical tax behaviour.<br/
The Integrity of the Tax System after BEPS: A Shared Responsibility
The international tax system is the result of the interaction of different actors who share the responsibility for its integrity. States and multinational corporations both enjoy to a certain extent freedom of choice with regard to their tax behaviour – which entails moral responsibility. Making, interpreting and using tax rules therefore is inevitably a matter of exercising responsibility. Both should abstain from viewing tax laws as a bunch of technical rules to be used as a tool without any intrinsic moral or legal value. States bear primary responsibility for the integrity of the international tax system. They should become more reticent in their use of tax as regulatory instrument – competing with one another for multinationals’ investment. They should also act more responsibly by cooperating to make better rules to prevent aggressive tax planning, which entails a shift in tax payments from very expert taxpayers to other taxpayers. Here, the distributive justice of the tax system and a level playing field should be guaranteed. Multinationals should abstain from putting pressure on states and lobbying for favourable tax rules that disproportionally affect other taxpayers – SMEs and individual taxpayers alike. Multinationals and their tax advisers should avoid irresponsible conduct by not aiming to pay a minimalist amount of (corporate income) taxes – merely staying within the boundaries of the letter of the law. Especially CSR-corporations should assume the responsibility for the integrity of the tax system
Bavarias tax privilege:On beer for free and the social contract
Vriend en vijand dringen aan op een minder complex en veranderlijk belastingstelsel. Maar er zijn altijd personen en bedrijven die aanspraak maken privileges. Zij lappen de wederkerigheid die de grondslag is van het sociaal contract aan hun laars
Fair tax legislation:Thomas Aquinas as a source of inspiration
Thomas van Aquino leefde 800 jaar geleden maar zijn werk verdient het nog steeds om bestudeerd te worden. Bij hem staat de wet ten dienste van het algemeen belang in een hiërarchisch geordende maatschappij. Hetzelfde geldt voor belastingen. Maar het dynamische begrip ‘algemeen belang’ heeft in de loop der tijd een andere, meer egalitaire, invulling gekregen. Thomas van Aquino stelt bepaalde eisen aan de wet en die gelden ook voor de belastingwet. Wetten moeten het resultaat zijn van een zorgvuldig deliberatief proces. Een onrechtvaardige (belasting)wet bindt niet in geweten. Spilzucht, meer heffen dan de burgers kunnen betalen, schending van het legaliteitsbeginsel en het draagkrachtbeginsel zijn vormen van onrechtvaardige belastingen. Dat zijn kwaliteitsnormen die er ook nu nog toe doen.<br/
Fair tax legislation:Thomas Aquinas as a source of inspiration
Thomas van Aquino leefde 800 jaar geleden maar zijn werk verdient het nog steeds om bestudeerd te worden. Bij hem staat de wet ten dienste van het algemeen belang in een hiërarchisch geordende maatschappij. Hetzelfde geldt voor belastingen. Maar het dynamische begrip ‘algemeen belang’ heeft in de loop der tijd een andere, meer egalitaire, invulling gekregen. Thomas van Aquino stelt bepaalde eisen aan de wet en die gelden ook voor de belastingwet. Wetten moeten het resultaat zijn van een zorgvuldig deliberatief proces. Een onrechtvaardige (belasting)wet bindt niet in geweten. Spilzucht, meer heffen dan de burgers kunnen betalen, schending van het legaliteitsbeginsel en het draagkrachtbeginsel zijn vormen van onrechtvaardige belastingen. Dat zijn kwaliteitsnormen die er ook nu nog toe doen.<br/
Bavarias tax privilege:On beer for free and the social contract
Vriend en vijand dringen aan op een minder complex en veranderlijk belastingstelsel. Maar er zijn altijd personen en bedrijven die aanspraak maken privileges. Zij lappen de wederkerigheid die de grondslag is van het sociaal contract aan hun laars
Magistratelijkheid
De begrippen ‘rechtsstatelijkheid’ en ‘magistratelijkheid’ drukken kernwaarden van de Belastingdienst uit. Mijns inziens is magistratelijkheid het ruimere begrip. Het voegt een bepaalde deugdzame beroepshouding bij het toepassen van rechtsstatelijke normen en procedures toe. Deugdethiek blijkt zo cruciaal bij belastingheffing. Maar het belang daarvan gaat verder dan de fiscaliteit – er is sprake van een uitstralingseffect. Deugdzame belastingheffing is namelijk van belang voor de legitimiteit en het vertrouwen in de rechtsorde als geheel, zoals Montesquieu al benadrukte
Taxation, Reciprocity and Communicative Regulation
Willem Witteveen promoted a communicative style of regulation with a focus on communication and dialogue between parties of more equal standing. The Dutch tax administration uses this approach to achieve voluntary compliance – supplementing the traditional command-and-control method of regulation. The underlying value of reciprocity entails a demand for good communication and even a dialogue between tax administration and taxpayers. Reciprocity here is at issue within the context of legal asymmetry, as the tax administration has considerable unilateral powers, and mutual dependence. Political and legal philosophers elucidate the notion of reciprocity. Spinoza shows the foundational nature of reciprocal collaboration between the sovereign lawmaker and legal subjects. Unlike Hobbes, he does not conceive reciprocity in a static way. More recently, Lon Fuller contrasted the idea of law based upon the principle of reciprocity with the command theory of law – a form of legal positivism. ‘Horizontal Monitoring’ is a specific Dutch form of a communicative style of regulation. This contribution analyses several features of this kind of reciprocal interaction
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