The Dual Income Tax and Firms' Income Shifting through the Choice of Organizational Form and Real Capital Investments

The dual income tax provides the self-employed entrepreneur with huge incentives to participate in tax minimizing income shifting to have more of his income taxed as capital income. The Norwegian split model is designed to remove these incentives, but it contains loopholes. The present paper concludes that the split model induces the self-employed entrepreneur to over-invest in firm real capital. In addition, the corporate organizational form serves as a tax shelter for high income entrepreneurs. The higher his income and the higher the difference between the marginal tax rates on labor and capital, the larger the incentives to incorporate.

Measuring the Consumption Value of Higher Education

This paper argues that the consumption value of education is an important motivation for the educational choice. While controlling for ability, we document that individuals are willing to forego substantial future wage returns in order to acquire a particular type of higher education. We document that the individuals who attended Teachers’ College in Norway during the 1960's had an ex ante willingness to pay for the consumption value of this educational type of at least 34% of the present value of expected potential lifetime income. The ex post price for this consumption value turned out to be 39% of their potential lifetime income.educational choice, type of education, non-pecuniary return, willingness to pay, consumption value of education

Income Tax, Consumption Value of Education, and the Choice of Educational Type

How the tax system might affect the individual’s educational level is well studied. But the question of how the tax system affects the individual’s choice of educational type is mostly ignored. This is an important issue, since the educational choice of today’s young generation determines the skill composition of tomorrow’s labor force and hence the future production possibilities of the country. This paper studies the problem in a partial model. A progressive tax system might in fact introduce distortions in the individuals’s educational choice and induce him to choose more of the educational type with the higher consumption value. If he also puts more weight on the present than on the future, this effect is strengthened further.

Neutral Taxation of Shareholder Income? Corporate Responses to an Announced Dividend Tax

The introduction of the 2006 Norwegian shareholder income tax was announced in advance, and it increased top marginal tax rates on individual dividend income from zero to 28 percent. We document strong timing effects on dividend payout on a large panel of non-listed corporations, with a surge of dividends prior to 2006 and a sharp drop after. Mature firms are more likely to pay dividends, and high asset growth increases the probability of retaining all earnings. Intertemporal income shifting through the timing of dividends seems to be a drain on internal equity and cause increases in the corporations’ debt-equity ratios. The debt ratios drop sharply after the implementation of the reform.neutral dividend tax, dual income tax, intertemporal income shifting, anticipation effects, corporate financial policy, transition

The Consumption Value of Higher Education

The consumption value of higher education is an important factor behind the individual’s educational choice. We provide a comprehensive literature survey, and define the consumption value as the private, intended, non-pecuniary return to higher education. We provide new empirical evidence for the willingness to pay for the consumption value of a particular type of higher education. Even when controlling for ability selection, we find on US data that Liberal Arts graduates were willing to forego 46 pct. of their potential income in order to enjoy the consumption value of this educational type.educational choice, type of education, non-pecuniary return, willingness to pay, consumption value of education

Corporations’ Choice of Tax Regime when Transition Costs are Small and Income Shifting Potential is Large

The literature provides ambiguous results on the effect of taxes on businesses’ choice of organizational form, partly due to a lack of good firm-level data. Our micro data covers the full population of non-financial Norwegian corporations over ten years. During this period, the dual income tax system allowed corporations to shift tax regime without changing organizational form. We show that the income shifting potential is large for the active owners of a corporation that participate in a tax reducing coalition. Our results show that corporations respond to tax incentives and change tax regime in order to reduce tax payments. But persistent cohort effects in the choice of tax regime and substantial unobserved corporation-specific effects indicate that non-tax factors matter as well. Corporations founded prior to the introduction of the dual income tax differ substantially from those founded after in their adaptation to the incentives for shifting tax regime.corporate taxation, choice of tax regime, tax minimization

Tax Effects, Search Unemployment, and the Choice of Educational Type

This paper examines the effect of taxes on the individuals’ choices of educational direction, and thus on the economy’s skill composition. A proportional labour income tax induces too many workers with high innate ability to choose an educational type with high consumption value and low effort costs. This increases the skill mismatch and aggregate unemployment in the economy. The government can correct for this distortion by use of differentiated tuition fees or tax rates.unemployment, matching, education, optimal taxation, tuition fees

Does the Tax System Encourage too much Education?

This paper provides an efficiency argument in favour of progressive labour income taxation. When the consumer faces a trade-off between investments in financial and human capital, a proportional comprehensive income tax tends to discriminate in favour of human capital investments. This effect is strengthened when education no longer is a pure investment, but also holds a direct consumption value. A comprehensive proportional income tax works as a tax subsidy on human capital investments, and it reduces the price of education as a consumption good. By introducing a progressive labour income tax, the efficiency distortion in the capital market may be partly neutralised.dual income taxation, optimal income taxation, human capital investment, consumption value of education

Barnehagelæreres språkarbeid med suksessivt tospråklige barn i barnehagen

Sammendrag Denne masteroppgaven retter søkelyset på hvordan barnehagelærere arbeider med språk og suksessivt tospråklige barn. Problemstillingen er som følgende: Hvilke muligheter og utfordringer møter barnehagelærere i sitt språkarbeid med suksessivt tospråklige barn i barnehagen Til problemstillingen er det knyttet fire hovedpunkt som grunnlag for utdyping. Det er punktene; språkarbeid, kartlegging, tidlig innsats og samarbeidet med foreldre og PPT. I arbeidet med å belyse problemstillingen har jeg valgt en kvalitativ metode hvor jeg har intervjuet fire barnehagelærere som alle har lang erfaring med språkarbeid og suksessivt tospråklige barn. Funnene er analysert gjennom bruk av den hermeneutiske tilnærmingen. Oppgaven bygger på aktuell teori og forskning innen språkarbeid for suksessivt tospråklige barn. Som fundament for analysen av funn har jeg brukt Vygotsky’s sosiokulturelle teori. Den sosiokulturelle læringsteorien vektlegger barnets utvikling i samhandling med mer kompetente andre. I analysen har også Bronfenbrenners økologiske modell, og hans fire nivå makro, meso, ekso og makro dannet grunnlag i drøfting av mine funn opp mot hvordan samfunnet rundt barnet påvirker barnehagelærer i sitt språkarbeid med suksessivt tospråklige barn. Informantene trekker også frem er at de ser både muligheter og utfordringer i sitt språkarbeid med suksessivt tospråklige barn. I bearbeidelsen av funnene kom jeg frem til fire hovedpunkt som belyser min problemstilling. 1. Barnehagelærerne arbeider med språk, gjennom hverdagsaktiviteter 2. Alle barnehagelærere vektlegger samarbeid med foreldrene som viktig punkt for å lykkes med språkarbeidet for suksessivt tospråklige barn. 3. Det mangler felles retningslinjer for kartlegging 4. Barnehagelærerne ønsker bedre samarbeid, til det beste for barne

Implementing a Data Infrastructure to Enable Business Analytics in the Public Sector: a case study

This paper describes the initial stages of the process of implementing the data infrastructure required to develop analytics capabilities in a public sector organization. Helfo (the Norwegian Health Economics Administration) is responsible for making payments on from the National Insurance scheme to healthcare actors who submit reimbursement claims. An important task for Helfo is also to prevent and detect errors, and the organization is currently strengthening this capacity though employing data analytics and artificial intelligence. Implementing data analytics entails more than a “plug-and-play” process, and we analyze the initial stages of the implementation process as a sociotechnical change process. As a starting point we employ the CRISP-DM process model and enrich this with additional steps and tasks that was found to be central in the case. In particular, we describe in more detail the preparatory work relating to the technical setup and data infrastructures, and the implications for the information processing routines of the organization more broadly. The case study shows that also the early-phase improvements in data access and utilizing basic analytics capabilities yielded benefits directly, without employing advanced analytics and artificial intelligence. The rich description of the early stages of the implementation process can be valuable for other public sector organizations that seek to build data analytic capabilities