Does financial VAT affect the size of the financial sector?

The influence of VAT applied to financial services on the size of the financial sector is analyzed empirically. The authors use data from 36 European Union and OECD countries for the period from 1961 to 2012. Dynamic panel data techniques are used, concretely the GMM System. An unbalanced panel is handled. The results allow the authors to support the theoretical analysis that financial VAT has no significant effect on financial sector development. Results are robust to the specifications of the dependent and target variables and to the econometric method applied

Financial VAT may improve trade openness

This paper theoretically and empirically analyzes how the taxation of financial services under VAT (‘financial VAT’) influences trade openness. The empirical analysis uses data from the OECD and 36 European Union countries for the period 1960–2019. Dynamic panel data techniques are used, concretely the GMM System, and an unbalanced panel is handled. The results corroborate that financial VAT, and in particular the ‘option-to-tax’ method applied by some countries in the European Union, are positively associated with a country’s trade openness. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Personal Income Tax Compliance at the Regional Level: The Role of Persistence, Neighborhood, and Decentralization

This article quantifies personal income tax compliance by regions for the first time in Spain and identifies the factors explaining differences in tax compliance between regions, an aspect that has scarcely been analyzed in the literature. To this end, and in addition to the dynamic and spatial components considered by Alm and Yunus, this article considers the variables included in the classical tax evasion model of Allingham and Sandmo, as well as tax morale and political-institutional variables, including those linked to the country’s fiscal decentralization. The results obtained confirm, on one hand, those reached in the very extensive literature studying tax evasion from the individual perspective (including the importance of the dynamic element) and, on the other, the relevance of the spatial component in explaining tax compliance, so that greater or lesser tax compliance is partly explained by factors such as the tax behavior of neighbors or how those neighbors are treated by the public sector

Consensus and dissent in the resolution of conflicts of competence by the Spanish Constitutional Court: the role of federalism and ideology

Given the lack of unambiguously constitutional foundations, Spain’s Constitutional Court (TC) has being playing a leading role in building the regulatory framework of the Autonomic State. This paper analyses whether this function is sufficient to explain the level of agreement among TC justices when adopting their resolutions, and in particular, on reaching unanimous rulings. If so, the legalist/federalist model would be a more adequate model to explain the behaviour of TC justices than the other models proposed in the literature on judicial behaviour: the attitudinal and the strategic models. A database has been constructed for this purpose with the 390 positive conflicts of competence between the central government and the autonomous communities resolved by the TC from 1981 to 2017, which have been used to estimate various explanatory models of unanimous rulings. The results obtained show the importance of the legalist/federalist model when attempting to explain unanimity in the Court’s pronouncements, but they also offer evidence that there are other factors that also influence the level of agreement among TC justices, remarkably the ideological ones

High-P metamorphism of rodingites during serpentinite dehydration (Cerro del Almirez, Southern Spain): Implications for the redox state in subduction zones

The transition between antigorite-serpentinite and chlorite-harzburgite at Cerro del Almirez (Betic Cordillera, Southern Spain) exceptionally marks in the field the front of antigorite breakdown at high pressure (~16–19 kbar) and temperature (~650°C) in a paleosubducted serpentinite. These ultramafic lithologies enclose three types of metarodingite boudins of variable size surrounded by metasomatic reaction rims. Type 1 Grandite-metarodingite (garnet+chlorite+diopside+titanite±magnetite±ilmenite) mainly crops out in the antigorite-serpentinite domain and has three generations of garnet. Grossular-rich Grt-1 formed during rodingitization at the seafloor (10 kbar, ~350–650°C, ~FMQ buffer) to influx events of oxidizing fluids (fO ~HM buffer) released by brucite breakdown in the host antigorite-serpentinite. Type 2 Epidote-metarodingite (epidote+diopside+titanite±garnet) derives from Type 1 and is the most abundant metarodingite type enclosed in dehydrated chlorite-harzburgite. Type 2 formed by increasing μSiO (from −884 to −860 kJ/mol) and decreasing μCaO (from −708 to −725 kJ/mol) triggered by the flux of high amounts of oxidizing fluids during the high-P antigorite breakdown in serpentinite. The growth of Grt-4, with low-grandite and high-pyralspite components, in Type 2 metarodingite accounts for progressive reequilibration of garnet with changing intensive variables. Type 3 Pyralspite-metarodingite (garnet+epidote+amphibole+chlorite±diopside+rutile) crops out in the chlorite-harzburgite domain and formed at peak metamorphic conditions (16–19 kbar, 660–684°C) from Type 2 metarodingite. This transformation caused the growth of a last generation of pyralspite-rich garnet (Grt-5) and the recrystallization of diopside into tremolitic amphibole at decreasing fO and μCaO (from −726 to −735 kJ/mol) and increasing μMgO (from −630 to −626 kJ/mol) due to chemical mixing between the metarodingite and the reaction rims. The different bulk Fe/Fe ratios of antigorite-serpentinite and chlorite-harzburgite, and of the three metarodingite types, reflect the highly heterogeneous oxidation state of the subducting slab and likely point to the transfer of localized oxidized reservoirs, such as metarodingites, into the deep mantle.“Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad” (MINECO), Grant/Award Number: CGL2012-32067, CGL201675224-R; Junta de Andalucía, Grant/ Award Number: RNM-145, P12-RNM3141; Ramón y Cajal, Grant/Award Number: RYC-2012-11314; MINECO, Grant/Award Number: CGL2016-81085-R, PCIN-2015-05

Cumplimiento fiscal en el IRPF a nivel regional: medición y estimación de sus factores explicativos

El trabajo cuantifica por primera vez en España el cumplimiento fiscal por regiones en el IRPF, y contribuye a identificar los factores explicativos de las diferencias de cumplimiento fiscal entre jurisdicciones, aspecto que apenas ha sido analizado en la literatura. Para ello, hemos considerado, además de los componentes dinámico y espacial considerados por Alm y Yunus (2009), las variables incluidas en el modelo de evasión fiscal de Allingham y Sandmo (1972), las relacionadas con la moral fiscal y las de índole político-institucional, incluidas las vinculadas con la descentralización fiscal del país. Los resultados obtenidos confirman, por una parte, los alcanzados por la muy extensa literatura que estudia el fraude fiscal desde la perspectiva de los individuos (incluida la importancia del elemento dinámico), pero también la relevancia del componente espacial para explicar el cumplimiento fiscal, de suerte que el mayor o menor fraude fiscal viene explicado, en parte, por factores tales como el comportamiento fiscal de los vecinos o la forma en que estos son tratados por el sector público

Is the Spanish Constitutional Court an instrument of the central government against the Autonomous Communities?

This work applies various probit/logit models to a database constructed by the authors, consisting of rulings by the Spanish Constitutional Court (Tribunal Constitucional, TC) resolving positive conflicts of competence between the Central Government and the Autonomous Communities from 1981 to 2014. Our goal is to contrast empirically whether the decisions of the Court respond strictly to legal criteria (the legalist or formalist viewpoint) or if they are determined by political motivations, so that we can state that the TC constitutes an extension, in the jurisdictional milieu, of the central executive power (the realist viewpoint). According to the results of our estimations, we can state that the approach which appears to predominate in the behaviour of the TC is the legalistic one

The uneasy coexistence of the Spanish foral and common regional finance systems

This paper develops a model which integrates the foral or cupo system applied to the Basque Country and Navarre, the common system applied to the other fifteen Spanish autonomous communities and the central government budget. The model shows that the theoretical cupo it generates is nothing more than an indirect form of measuring the equalising transfer between the central government and the corresponding autonomous jurisdiction. The cupo form per se is completely neutral: the foral jurisdictions operate exactly under the same financial conditions as the non-foral jurisdictions, despite that in the latter case the transfer is directly measured as the difference between expenditure needs and fiscal capacity. In the context of our model, the cause of the foral economic advantage is the particular imputation procedure developed by the cupo law, which clearly biases the scales in favour of the foral and, therefore, against the non-foral communities. An economic advantage of the foral respect to the aggregate of the non-foral communities that, even if only referred to the design of the cupo, we have estimated at 29.8% in the case of the Basque Country and at 28.2% in the case on Navarre. These calculations should be interpreted as a lower bound on the foral advantage. The model has clear implications for reform. El trabajo desarrolla un modelo que integra los sistemas común y foral de financiación autonómica. Este enfoque permite entender las relaciones entre el nivel central y las comunidades de régimen común y foral y ofrece una imagen completa e integrada de la financiación autonómica. El trabajo muestra que el cupo no es más que una forma indirecta de calcular la transferencia de nivelación entre el gobierno central y la correspondiente región. Si las necesidades de gasto se miden de manera consistente para todo el sistema, la forma de cálculo del cupo es completamente neutral. La existencia de una ventaja económica deriva del procedimiento de imputación que se sigue para calcular el cupo. Estimando el modelo con los datos disponibles, encontramos que, de un exceso observado de recursos per cápita del 109, 1% para el País Vasco, un 61, 1% está justificado por las diferencias competenciales con las comunidades de régimen común, quedando un exceso injustificado del 29, 8%. El modelo tiene claras implicaciones de reforma: incluso respetando el procedimiento indirecto para calcularlo, se pude redefinir el cupo de manera que las comunidades forales dispongan de los mismos recursos per cápita que las comunidades de régimen común

Cross-Border Shopping: A Survey

Cross-border shopping, Tax differences, H31, H32, H73, E62,