Is there a connection between the tax administration and the political power?

This paper offers empirical evidence from Spain of a connection between the tax administration and the political power. Firstly, the regional tax administration is not immune to the budgetary situation of regional government, and tends to exert a greater (or lesser) effort in tax collection the greater (or lower) the (expected) public deficit. At the same time, the system of unconditional grants from the central layer of government provokes an income effect which disincentivises the efforts of the tax administration. Secondly, these efforts also decrease when the margin to lose a parliamentary seat in an electoral district is cut, although the importance of this disincentive decreases according to the parliamentary strength of the incumbent.political economy, tax administration

Tax Evasion in Interrelated Taxes

In 1969, Shoup postulated that the presence of interrelated taxes in a tax system would reinforce the system of tax penalty ("self-reinforcing penalty system of taxes"). In this paper, we have tried to formally develop this idea. We find that in order that tax re-enforcement holds, it is necessary that the interrelated taxes are administered by a single tax administration, or in the case that they are administered by different tax administrations, the level of collaboration between them has to be high enough. If that is the case, tax evasion in interrelated taxes might be considered as an alternative explanation of the existing gap between the levels of tax evasion that can be guessed in practice and those much lower predicted by the classical theory of tax evasion (Allingham and Sandmo, 1972; Yitzhaki, 1974). Otherwise, the result expected by Shoup might even reverse. Moreover, as long as collaboration is imperfect, the classical results of the comparative statics might change, since in some cases although global tax compliance increases in front of a variation in a tax parameter, it can decrease in a tax.Tax Evasion

The Politics of Tax Administration: Evidence from Spain

Does there exist a connection between the political power and the tax administration? In this paper, we offer empirical evidence from Spain that there exists. First, the Spanish regional tax administration is not immune to the budgetary situation of the regional government, and tends to exert a greater (lower) effort in tax collection as the (expected) public deficit is greater (lower). At the same time, the system of unconditional grants provokes an “income effect” that disincentives the efforts carried out by the tax administration. Second, when the margin to lose a parliamentary seat in an electoral district decreases, the efforts also diminish, though this disincentive is lessened according to the parliamentary strength of the incumbent (evidence of electoral competition).Tax Administration, Political Economy

(Uncontrolled) Aggregate shocks or vertical tax interdependence? Evidende from gasoline and cigarettes

Besley and Rosen (1998) were the first authors to empirically estimate the presence of vertical tax externalities. They tested it on gasoline and tobacco unitary taxes. However, they did not take into account the difference in cost of living across states: high cost areas pay less in real terms than low cost areas, since the nominal unit tax on cigarettes and gasoline does not differ according to the state in which it is applied. Consequently, we propose that vertical tax competition can be estimated by deflating all financial variables using the House Price Index (HPI), which is disaggregated by states. This produces a federal tax variable that is expressed in real terms and shows crosssectional variation. This empirical strategy enabled us to disentangle the vertical interdependence between state and federal tax rates from aggregate shocks over time, using US data from 1975 to 2006 on gasoline and tobacco. We found significant horizontal tax competition, which was higher for cigarettes, but no vertical tax reaction. The results were robust to the period analyzed.tax setting, vertical tax externality

Temps d'educació

Resumen basado en el de la publicaciónEl objetivo es describir el sistema de evaluación continua diseñado para una asignatura muy masificada utilizando la plataforma Moodle, así como analizar los resultados obtenidos. Las pruebas de evaluación se han implementado a través de cuestionarios en la plataforma Moodle. El diseño de este sistema de evaluación para cuestionarios online ha permitido aplicar un sistema de evaluación continua igual a todos los grupos, con un feedback inmediato. Los resultados obtenidos permiten concluir que la valoración de esta metodología de aprendizaje y sistema de evaluación es positiva. Es importante destacar que los resultados son muy sensibles en función de cómo se considere la nota de la evaluación continua para determinar la nota final.ES