Alternative State Business Tax Systems:A Comparison of State Income and Gross Receipts Taxes

This report provides a five-point comparison between a state corporate income tax and a state gross receipts tax. FRC Report 15

Analysis of Georgia's Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund Reserves - Brief

This report analyses several aspects of Georgia's Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund, including the structure and the appropriate target level for the Trust Fund balance for the state of Georgia. FRC Brief 12

Analysis of Georgia's Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund Reserves

This report analyses several aspects of Georgia's Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund, including the structure and the appropriate target level for the Trust Fund balance for the state of Georgia. FRC Report 12

Alternative State Business Tax Systems:A Comparison of State Income and Gross Receipts Taxes - Brief

This report provides a five-point comparison between a state corporate income tax and a state gross receipts tax. FRC Brief 15

Analysis of Gender and Youth Employment in Rwanda

This study focuses on labor outcomes of women and youth?the former have moved into low-quality employment, while the latter have high rates of underemployment. Labor market outcomes are examined through geographic analysis and a study of factors affecting employment at the individual level. The analysis is based on cross-sectional data collected by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR). The study uses the two most recent waves of the nationally representative household surveys for 2005/06 and 2010/11. The other source was the 2010 Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey. The methods used to meet the study objectives were a literature review of previous work on the Rwandan labor market, participation profiling via a descriptive analysis, and econometric analysis of determinants of employment outcomes

Perfect Competition, Spatial Competition, and Tax Incidence in the Retail Gasoline Market

This report uses monthly gas price data for all 50 U.S. states over the period 1984-1999 to examine the incidence of state gasoline excise taxes. FRC Report 11

Public spending composition and public sector efficiency: Implications for growth and poverty reduction in Uganda

The paper examines the interrelationships between public spending composition and Uganda's development goals including economic growth and poverty reduction. We utilize a dynamic CGE model to study these interrelationships. This paper demonstrates that public spending composition does indeed influence economic growth and poverty reduction. In particular, this study shows that improved public sector efficiency coupled with re-allocation of public expenditure away from the unproductive sectors such as public administration and security to the productive sectors including agriculture, energy, water and health leads to higher GDP growth rates and accelerates poverty reduction. Moreover, the rate of poverty is faster in rural households relative to the urban households. A major contribution of this paper is that investments in agriculture particularly with a view of promoting value addition and investing in complementary infrastructure including roads and affordable energy contributes to higher economic growth rates and also accelerates the rate of poverty reduction.Sennoga, Matovu, EPRC, Public expenditure, Economic growth - Uganda, Poverty reduction, Computable General Equilibrium, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Consumer/Household Economics, Crop Production/Industries, Demand and Price Analysis, Financial Economics, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Production Economics, Public Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, C68, D58, E62, F15, H62, 132,

Essays on Tax Evasion

Essay one develops and tests a revenue-maximizing tax structure model. This model represents one of the first attempts to evaluate and compare the responsiveness of various tax instruments to tax evasion within a tax revenue maximization framework. We use data from both the OECD and East African countries and estimation is via a seemingly unrelated regression model. The GDP share of agricultural income is used as an instrument to correct for the simultaneity between tax revenue shares and tax evasion. Our findings indicate that tax evasion increases the tax authority’s reliance on consumption taxes vis-à-vis taxes on income, suggesting that diverse tax instruments respond differently to tax evasion, and as such the choice of a revenue-maximizing tax structure is influenced by the amount of revenue lost through tax evasion. Essay two analyzes the incidence of tax evasion in both the formal and informal sectors of the economy using a computable general equilibrium model. This essay incorporates the element of uncertainty in an individual’s decision to evade so as to account for the uncertainty of returns to the tax evader. We also allow for varying degrees of competi¬tion or entry across sectors in the economy to examine how much of the tax advantage is retained by the initial evaders and how much is shifted via factor and commodity price changes. Our simulation results show that the evading households’ post-evasion welfare is only 0.68-3.40 percent higher than the post-tax welfare if it had fully complied with taxes. The simulation results further reveal that the evading household keeps 77.1-83.2 percent of this initial increase in welfare, while 16.8-22.9 percent of this initial gain is competed away as a result of increased competition and entry into the informal sector. The compliant households’ welfare increases by 58.8-101.7 percent with increased competition in the informal sector. Therefore, if we construe the changes in consumer welfare as an overall indicator of the gains and/or losses from tax evasion, then the evading household only benefits marginally and this advantage diminishes with increased entry or competition in the informal sector

Perfect Competition, Spatial Competition, and Tax Incidence in the Retail Gasoline Market - Brief

This report uses monthly gas price data for all 50 U.S. states over the period 1984-1999 to examine the incidence of state gasoline excise taxes. FRC Brief 11

The Practice of Environmental Training: A case of ISO 14001 Certified Businesses in Durban, South Africa

Environmental management has moved from a policy concept to a proactive strategy defining business responsiveness to stakeholder and market-related pressures towards improved environmentally sustainable business practices. There is increasing business responsiveness through corporate sustainability and environmental management practices. A growing number of environmental regulations make the adoption of environmental management systems such as ISO 14001 more common and this necessitates training. While environmental training is receiving international attention, it is seemingly less prominently investigated in the South African context. In this article, results from an empirical study into the environmental training practices of Durban businesses are presented. By applying the ISO 14001 certification criterion, 24 businesses were identified as research participants. The practice of environmental training was investigated considering three themes i.e. environmental attitudes and culture, training resources and commitment, and impediments to environmental training. In exploring these themes, the main questions of the extent of environmental training and its effectiveness are determined. It was found that environmental training is widely practised across all businesses sampled, with impact-focused training topics supported by positive environmental attitudes. However, other areas emerge as problematic, including limited organisational prioritisation of environmental training as well as insufficient further training topics which can limit the efficacy of training activities.Keywords: environmental training; environmental education; ISO 14001; Environmental Management Systems; corporate sustainabilit