The economic psychology of value added tax compliance

VAT is a tax on consumer expenditure, collected on business transactions and assessed on the value added to goods and services. It applies, with some exceptions (for example, to young children’s clothes and shoes in the UK), to all goods and services that are bought and sold. VAT is a general tax (as it applies, in principle, to all commercial activities) and a consumption tax (as it is paid ultimately by the final consumer). It is not actually a tax on business, though some business owners do see it that way. In fact, whilst VAT is paid to the tax authorities by the seller of the goods or services, the tax is paid by the buyer to the seller as part of the tax and so, in essence, businesses are acting as unpaid tax collectors. VAT was first introduced in France in 1954, and subsequently has been extended, through a series of directives, to cover the whole of the European Union (EU). The system in the EU is now reasonably standardized, although different rates of VAT apply in different EU member states. The minimum standard rate in the EU is 15 percent, though lower rates are applied to certain services. Some goods and services are exempt from VAT throughout the EU (e.g., postal services, insurance, betting). In addition to spreading throughout Europe (member states are required to introduce VAT, so the increase in membership of the EU has inevitably increased the number of countries that use this system), VAT has also been introduced in a large number of other countries, notably China (Yeh, 1997), and India (after many delays) in 2005, so that now over 130 countries world-wide operate VAT. In the Caribbean, for example, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, and Antigua have all introduced VAT in the past two years. Other countries have introduced taxes that are classified as value added taxes, such as Australia, which now operates a General Sales Tax (GST). The introduction of VAT has been the major tax reform around the world in the past 25 years, and VAT is now of global significance and impact (Ebrill et al., 2001)

Living the dream? : A qualitative retrospective study exploring the role of adolescent aspirations across the life span

There is a lack of longitudinal research linking adolescent career aspirations to adult outcomes other than career and income attainment. Drawing on Nurmi's (2004) and Salmela-Aro, Aunola, and Nurmi's (2007) life-span model of motivation and using quantitative survey data at ages 16, 23, 33, 42, and 50 years, combined with retrospective interview data at age 50 (collected from 25 members of a British cohort study born in 1958), we aimed to gain a more rounded understanding of the role that adolescent career aspirations play in shaping not only adult career development but also adult identities and well-being. Twenty-two of the 25 participants fulfilled their adolescent career aspirations later in life through achieving (a) the exact career they aspired to or (b) the social status of the career they aspired to. In relation to adult personal identity and well-being, the findings suggest that what matters is not just whether a person aims high at age 16 (i.e., to be a professional or a manager) but also whether the person remembers having strong or meaningful career aspirations. Further themes, gender differences, and implications for policy and future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Legal Work and the Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Preferentially Selected to Lead Problematic Cases

Recent archival and experimental research by Ryan and Haslam has revealed the phenomenon of the glass cliff whereby women are more likely than men to be appointed to risky or precarious leadership positions in problematic organizational circumstances. This paper extends research on the glass cliff by examining the precariousness of the cases women are assigned in a legal context. An experimental study conducted with law students (N = 114) investigated the appointment of a candidate to lead a legal case that was defined as either low-risk or high-risk. Commensurate with patterns observed in other domains, results indicated that a male candidate was as likely as a female to be selected as lead counsel for a low-risk case but that there was a strong preference for a female rather than a male appointment for a high-risk case. The study also examines the way in which participants\u27 evaluations of candidates and their perceptions of risk and opportunity related to candidate selection. Implications and directions for future research are discussed

Career success: the role of teenage career aspirations, ambition value and gender in predicting adult social status and earnings

Links between family social background, teenage career aspirations, educational performance and adult social status attainment are well documented. Using a contextual developmental framework, this article extends previous research by examining the role of gender and teenage ambition value in shaping social status attainment and earnings in adulthood. Drawing on data from an 18-year British follow up study we tested a path model linking family background factors (such as family social status and parental aspirations) and individual agency factors in adolescence (in particular, career aspirations and ambition value) to social status attainment and earnings in adulthood. The findings suggest that ambition value is linked to adult earnings. That is, young people for whom it is important to get on in their job earn more money in adulthood than their less ambitious peers. The findings also confirm that teenage career aspirations are linked to adult social status attainment, and suggest that family background factors, teenage career aspirations and ambition value interact to influence social status attainment and earnings in adulthood. Gender differences are discusse

A pilot Internet "Value of Health" Panel: recruitment, participation and compliance

Objectives To pilot using a panel of members of the public to provide preference data via the Internet Methods A stratified random sample of members of the general public was recruited and familiarised with the standard gamble procedure using an Internet based tool. Health states were perdiodically presented in "sets" corresponding to different conditions, during the study. The following were described: Recruitment (proportion of people approached who were trained); Participation (a) the proportion of people trained who provided any preferences and (b) the proportion of panel members who contributed to each "set" of values; and Compliance (the proportion, per participant, of preference tasks which were completed). The influence of covariates on these outcomes was investigated using univariate and multivariate analyses. Results A panel of 112 people was recruited. 23% of those approached (n = 5,320) responded to the invitation, and 24% of respondents (n = 1,215) were willing to participate (net = 5.5%). However, eventual recruitment rates, following training, were low (2.1% of those approached). Recruitment from areas of high socioeconomic deprivation and among ethnic minority communities was low. Eighteen sets of health state descriptions were considered over 14 months. 74% of panel members carried out at least one valuation task. People from areas of higher socioeconomic deprivation and unmarried people were less likely to participate. An average of 41% of panel members expressed preferences on each set of descriptions. Compliance ranged from 3% to 100%. Conclusion It is feasible to establish a panel of members of the general public to express preferences on a wide range of health state descriptions using the Internet, although differential recruitment and attrition are important challenges. Particular attention to recruitment and retention in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation and among ethnic minority communities is necessary. Nevertheless, the panel approach to preference measurement using the Internet offers the potential to provide specific utility data in a responsive manner for use in economic evaluations and to address some of the outstanding methodological uncertainties in this field

Low potency toxins reveal dense interaction networks in metabolism

Background The chemicals of metabolism are constructed of a small set of atoms and bonds. This may be because chemical structures outside the chemical space in which life operates are incompatible with biochemistry, or because mechanisms to make or utilize such excluded structures has not evolved. In this paper I address the extent to which biochemistry is restricted to a small fraction of the chemical space of possible chemicals, a restricted subset that I call Biochemical Space. I explore evidence that this restriction is at least in part due to selection again specific structures, and suggest a mechanism by which this occurs. Results Chemicals that contain structures that our outside Biochemical Space (UnBiological groups) are more likely to be toxic to a wide range of organisms, even though they have no specifically toxic groups and no obvious mechanism of toxicity. This correlation of UnBiological with toxicity is stronger for low potency (millimolar) toxins. I relate this to the observation that most chemicals interact with many biological structures at low millimolar toxicity. I hypothesise that life has to select its components not only to have a specific set of functions but also to avoid interactions with all the other components of life that might degrade their function. Conclusions The chemistry of life has to form a dense, self-consistent network of chemical structures, and cannot easily be arbitrarily extended. The toxicity of arbitrary chemicals is a reflection of the disruption to that network occasioned by trying to insert a chemical into it without also selecting all the other components to tolerate that chemical. This suggests new ways to test for the toxicity of chemicals, and that engineering organisms to make high concentrations of materials such as chemical precursors or fuels may require more substantial engineering than just of the synthetic pathways involved

Modelling human choices: MADeM and decision‑making

Research supported by FAPESP 2015/50122-0 and DFG-GRTK 1740/2. RP and AR are also part of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center for Neuromathematics FAPESP grant (2013/07699-0). RP is supported by a FAPESP scholarship (2013/25667-8). ACR is partially supported by a CNPq fellowship (grant 306251/2014-0)

Convalescent plasma in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised controlled, open-label, platform trial

SummaryBackground Azithromycin has been proposed as a treatment for COVID-19 on the basis of its immunomodulatoryactions. We aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of azithromycin in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19.Methods In this randomised, controlled, open-label, adaptive platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19Therapy [RECOVERY]), several possible treatments were compared with usual care in patients admitted to hospitalwith COVID-19 in the UK. The trial is underway at 176 hospitals in the UK. Eligible and consenting patients wererandomly allocated to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus azithromycin 500 mg once perday by mouth or intravenously for 10 days or until discharge (or allocation to one of the other RECOVERY treatmentgroups). Patients were assigned via web-based simple (unstratified) randomisation with allocation concealment andwere twice as likely to be randomly assigned to usual care than to any of the active treatment groups. Participants andlocal study staff were not masked to the allocated treatment, but all others involved in the trial were masked to theoutcome data during the trial. The primary outcome was 28-day all-cause mortality, assessed in the intention-to-treatpopulation. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, 50189673, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04381936.Findings Between April 7 and Nov 27, 2020, of 16 442 patients enrolled in the RECOVERY trial, 9433 (57%) wereeligible and 7763 were included in the assessment of azithromycin. The mean age of these study participants was65·3 years (SD 15·7) and approximately a third were women (2944 [38%] of 7763). 2582 patients were randomlyallocated to receive azithromycin and 5181 patients were randomly allocated to usual care alone. Overall,561 (22%) patients allocated to azithromycin and 1162 (22%) patients allocated to usual care died within 28 days(rate ratio 0·97, 95% CI 0·87–1·07; p=0·50). No significant difference was seen in duration of hospital stay (median10 days [IQR 5 to >28] vs 11 days [5 to >28]) or the proportion of patients discharged from hospital alive within 28 days(rate ratio 1·04, 95% CI 0·98–1·10; p=0·19). Among those not on invasive mechanical ventilation at baseline, nosignificant difference was seen in the proportion meeting the composite endpoint of invasive mechanical ventilationor death (risk ratio 0·95, 95% CI 0·87–1·03; p=0·24).Interpretation In patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19, azithromycin did not improve survival or otherprespecified clinical outcomes. Azithromycin use in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 should be restrictedto patients in whom there is a clear antimicrobial indication