Corporation taxes in the European Union: Slowly moving toward comprehensive business income taxation?

This paper is a substantial revision of a paper presented at the 71st Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance (Dublin, 20–23 August, 2015), which was issued under the title Tackling Spillovers by Taxing Corporate Income in the European Union at Source, as CPB Discussion Paper 324 (February 2016) and as CESifo Working Paper No. 5790 (March 2016).This paper surveys and evaluates the corporation tax systems of the Member States of the European Union on the basis of a comprehensive taxonomy of actual and potential regimes, which have as their base either profits; profits, interest and royalties; or economic rents. The current regimes give rise to various instate and interstate spillovers, which violate the basic tenets—neutrality and subsidiarity—of the single market. The trade-offs between the implications of these tenets—harmonization and diversity, respectively—can be reconciled by a bottom-up strategy of strengthening source-based taxation and narrowing differences in tax rates. The strategy starts with dual income taxation, proceeds with final source withholding taxes and rate coordination, and is made complete by comprehensive business income taxation. Common base and cash flow taxation are not favored.http://link.springer.com/journal/10797am2017Economic

Feedback Stabilization Of Nonlinear Systems

This paper surveys some well-known facts as well as some recent developments on the topic of stabilization of nonlinear systems. 1 Introduction In this paper we consider problems of local and global stabilization of control systems x = f(x; u) ; f(0; 0) = 0 (1) whose states x(t) evolve on IR n and with controls taking values on IR m , for some integers n and m. The interest is in finding feedback laws u = k(x) ; k(0) = 0 which make the closed-loop system x = F (x) = f(x; k(x)) (2) asymptotically stable about x = 0. Associated problems, such as those dealing with the response to possible input perturbations u = k(x) + v of the feedback law, will be touched upon briefly. We assume that f is smooth (infinitely differentiable) on (x; u), though much less, --for instance a Lipschitz condition,-- is needed for many results. The discussion will emphasize intuitive aspects, but we shall state the main results as clearly as possible. The references cited should be consulted, however, f..

The Relevance of Procedural Utility for Economics

This paper aims at showing the relevance of procedural utility for economics: people do not only care about outcomes, as usually assumed in economics, they also value the processes and conditions leading to outcomes. The psychological foundations of procedural utility are outlined and it is discussed how the concept differs from other related approaches in economics, like outcome utility, outcome fairness or intentions. Institutions at the level of society and fair procedures are shown to be sources of procedural utility, and novel empirical evidence on the role of procedural utility in important areas of the economy, polity and society is presented

Patriotism and taxation

The provision of public goods by any government generally requires a significant amount of financial resources. Yet the inherent characteristics of public goods imply that individuals who refuse to contribute financially cannot easily be excluded from the benefits provided by public goods. This chapter explores how, and when, patriotism can increase private incentives to make contributions to the common good – and thereby mitigate the free rider problem at the heart of public finances. We discuss this patriotism-taxation relation in times of war as well as peace and evaluate whether patriotism might help to (partially) moderate the incentives to avoid or even evade taxes. Finally, we consider the role of two potential mechanisms – i.e., migration and identification – underlying the patriotism-taxation relation and examine governments’ incentives to invest in instilling patriotic sentiments in the population for fiscal reasons