Incidence of Income Taxation in Sri Lanka

Taxation is a major instrument of fiscal policy which is used to achieve socio economic objectives. While the primary objective of taxation is to raise revenue to finance government expenditure, it should also be equitable. This study aims to identify the nature of distribution of income tax burden among the income groups in Sri Lanka and provides taxpayers and policymakers with important information on the equity or fairness of the income tax distribution in Sri Lanka. In the case of personal income taxes the burden is unevenly distributed among the registered taxpayers. The study finds that about 87.93 percent of resident individual income taxes shared by only 10.9 percent taxpayers. About 32.95 percent taxpayers pay almost 98.5 percent of income taxes. It depicts the peculiarity of Sri Lanka tax structure where about 43.76 percent of registered individual taxpayers share very insignificant (only 0.97 percent) tax liability. In the case of corporate taxes the major portion of the tax revenue is generated from a small group of companies and corporations. About 66.77 per cent corporate tax payers are paying no taxes for the government showing negative income and revealed as loss cases. About 99 per cent of income tax burden is placed on a small number of (about 13 per cent) corporate tax payers.  This study also gives some recommendations which act as remedies for a better tax system in Sri Lanka and would be relevant to other developing countries as well. Keywords: Equity of taxation, Economic Incidence, Income tax, Statutory Incidence, Tax Progressivity, Tax exemption

Book Review: Threatened fishes of India

The book 'Threatened fishes of India is the proceedings of the National seminar on Endangered Fishes of India held at Allahabad on 25th and 26th April 992 Thebook provides a lot of informatlon and also points out the lacunae in information with respect to the endangered fishes of India, both inland and marine

Digestibility of feeds in fish and shellfish and methods to determine digestibility

Digestibility of a feedstuff can be described as the amount of feed that can be digested and absorbed by the animal in relation to consumption. Digestibility is measured as digestibility coefficient when it is expressed as percentage and as digestible energy which is most often used in warm water fishes. Knowledge of nutrient availability is necessory for effective substitution of ingredients for formulating low cost diets

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND CORPORATE FINANCE: EVIDENCE FROM CHINESE LISTED COMPANIES

This thesis explores the linkages between corporate governance and corporate finance, making use of a large panel of Chinese listed firms over the period 2003-2010. We investigate three main themes. First, we examine the impact of managerial ownership and other corporate governance variables on firms’ exporting decisions, which are characterized by considerable risk and information asymmetries. We document that both export propensity and intensity increase with managerial ownership up to a point of around 23%-27%, and decrease thereafter. We also find a negative association between state ownership and export intensity. Furthermore, we observe that the larger the board size, the lower the firm’s export propensity and intensity, and that firms with a higher proportion of independent directors in the board are generally less likely to export. These findings are driven by privately controlled firms during the post-2006 split share structure reform period. Second, we examine the relationship between managerial ownership and corporate investment decisions. We find that investment decisions are systematically related to managerial ownership in two ways. Firstly, managerial ownership exerts a positive direct effect on corporate investment decisions, by aligning management’s incentives with the interests of shareholders. Secondly, we document that, by acting as a form of collateral to lenders, managerial ownership helps to reduce the degree of financial constraints faced by firms. Third, we examine the impact of ownership and corporate governance on agency costs. We measure the latter in two ways: using the sales to assets ratio, and the general administration and selling expenses scaled by assets. We find that, especially in the post-2006 split share structure reform period, increased managerial ownership and debt financing work as effective corporate governance mechanisms, by mitigating agency problems. We also find evidence that while legal person shareholding helps to mitigate agency costs for privately controlled firms in the post-reform period, large boards of directors are associated with higher agency costs in government controlled firms. From a policy perspective, our findings suggest that the Chinese government’s recent policies aimed at reforming ownership structure and encouraging managerial ownership in listed firms have helped to reduce agency and asymmetric information problems, thereby enabling firms to enhance investment efficiency and international activities. Our study recommends that greater attention should therefore be paid to compensation contracts of the management team and to board characteristics, and that state ownership should be further reduced. This would help further enhance resource allocation efficiency and sustain high levels of economic growth

Of boundaries, overlaps and variability in LMEs the case of Bay of Bengal

The paper examines the influence of localized studies in enforcing arbitrary boundaries in the ecosystem" How the proliferation of studies in watertight compartments would make the boundaries more rigid and unbreakable is explained. Inadequate attention to overlap of communities and phenomena has been identified as an inevitable outcome of rigid boundary concepts. The issues related to the variability in the system and its intluence on rhe components often remain unnoticed or unresolved because of the limits of perception imposed by the boundaries" Over viewing the global trend, an approach to study the Bay of Bengal as a Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) is suggested

On the Economics of Subsidies with a special note on fuel (HSO)subsidy for deepsea fishing vessels

Subsidy is considered as negative tax in economic parlance. As tax imposed on a given product discourages (or is expected so) its production and consumption, a subsidy produces a reverse effect. Subsidy is a transfer payment. Hence it is not included in national product or income. But as far as expenditure is concerned, it becomes a part and parcel of the sources of financs to be spent on goods and services produced

Manning Fisheries Sector – The Need For A Paradigm Shift

India produced about 8 million ton of fi sh in recent � mes and became the third largest producer in the world. The country ranks second in aquaculture produc� on. India’s seafood exports crossed 800 thousand ton during 2010-11 fetching about ` 12000 crore in foreign exchange. The fi shery products export exceeded all other agricultural commodities. The country is poised to achieve the projected demand of 16 million t produc� on by the year 2025