Comparative Tax Law

Comparative Tax Law
Author: Victor Thuronyi
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2016-04-20
Genre: Law
ISBN: 904116720X

Although the details of tax law are literally endless—differing not only from jurisdiction to jurisdiction but also from day-to-day—structures and patterns exist across tax systems that can be understood with relative ease. This book, now in an updated new edition, focuses on these essential patterns. It provides an immensely useful introduction to the core common knowledge that any well-informed tax lawyer or policy maker should have about comparative tax law in our times. The busy reader will welcome the compact nature of this work, which is shorter than the first edition and can be read in a weekend if one skips footnotes. The authors elucidate the commonalities and differences across countries in areas including (much of the detail new to the second edition): • general anti-avoidance rules; • court decisions striking down tax laws as violating constitutional rules against retroactivity, unequal treatment of equals, confiscation, and undue vagueness; • statutory interpretation; • inflation adjustment rules and the allowance for corporate equity; • value added tax systems; • concepts such as “tax”, “capital gain”, “tax avoidance”, and “partnership”; • corporate-shareholder tax systems; • the relationship between tax and financial accounting; • taxation of investment income; • tax authorities’ ability to obtain and process information about taxpayers; and • systems of appeals from tax assessments. The information and analysis pull together valuable material which is scattered over a disparate literature, much of it not available in English. Especially considering the dynamic nature of tax law, whose rate of change exceeds that of any other field of law, the authors’ clear identification of the underlying patterns and fundamental structures that all tax systems have in common—as well as where the differences lie—guides the reader and offers resources for further research.

A Comparative Look at Regulation of Corporate Tax Avoidance

A Comparative Look at Regulation of Corporate Tax Avoidance
Author: Karen B. Brown
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2011-12-09
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9400723423

This volume provides a fascinating look at the anti-tax avoidance strategies employed by more than fifteen countries in eastern and western Europe, Canada, the Pacific Rim, Asia, Africa, and the United States. It surveys the similarities and differences in anti-avoidance regimes and contains detailed chapters for each country surveying the moral and legal dimensions of the problem. The proliferation of tax avoidance schemes in recent years signals the global dimensions of a problem presenting a serious challenge to the effective administration of tax laws. Tax avoidance involves unacceptable manipulation of the law to obtain a tax advantage. These transactions support wasteful behavior in which corporations enter into elaborate, circuitous arrangements solely to minimize tax liability. It frustrates the ability of governments to collect sufficient revenue to provide essential public goods and services. Avoidance of duly enacted provisions (or manipulation to secure tax benefits unintended by the legislature) poses a threat to the effective operation of a free society for the benefit of a small group of members who seek the privilege of shifting their tax burden onto others merely to compete in the world of commerce. In a world in which world treasuries struggle for the resources to battle terrorist threats and to secure a decent standard of living for constituents tax avoidance can bring economies close to the edge of sustainability. As tax avoidance is one of the top concerns of most nations, the importance of this work cannot be overstated.

Comparative Income Taxation

Comparative Income Taxation
Author: Hugh J. Ault
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 904113204X

The purpose of this book is to compare different solutions adopted by nine industrialized countries to common problems of income tax design. As in other legal domains, comparative study of income taxation can provide fresh perspectives from which to examine a particular national system. Increasing economic globalization also makes understanding foreign tax systems relevant to a growing set of transnational business transactions. Comparative study is, however, notoriously difficult. Full understanding of a foreign tax system may require mastery not only of a foreign language, but also of foreign business and legal cultures. It would be the work of a lifetime for a single individual to achieve that level of understanding of the nine income taxes compared in this volume. Suppose, however, that an international group of tax law professors, each expert in his own national system, were asked to describe how that system resolved specific problems of income tax design with respect to individuals, business organizations, and international transactions. Suppose further that the leaders of the group wove the resulting answers into a single continuous exposition, which was then reviewed and critiqued by a wider group of tax teachers. The resulting text would provide a convenient and comprehensive introduction to foreign approaches to income taxation for teachers, students, policy-makers and practitioners. That is the path followed by Hugh Ault and Brian Arnold and their collaborators in the development of this fascinating book. Henceforth, a reader interested in how other developed countries resolve such structural issues as the taxation of fringe benefits, the effect of unrealized appreciation at death, the classification of business entities, expatriation to avoid taxes, and so on, can turn to this volume for an initial answer. This book should greatly facilitate comparative analysis in teaching and writing about taxation in the US and elsewhere.

Value Added Tax

Value Added Tax
Author: Alan Schenk
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2007-01-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780521851121

This book integrates legal, economic, and administrative materials about value added tax. Its principal purpose is to provide comprehensive teaching tools - laws, cases, analytical exercises, and questions drawn from the experience of countries and organizations from all areas of the world. It also serves as a resource for tax practitioners and government officials that must grapple with issues under their VAT or their prospective VAT. The comparative presentation of this volume offers an analysis of policy issues relating to tax structure and tax base as well as insights into how cases arising out of VAT disputes have been resolved. The authors have expanded the coverage to include new VAT related developments in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. A chapter on financial services has been added as well as an analysis of significant new cases.

VAT and Financial Services

VAT and Financial Services
Author: Robert F. van Brederode
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2017-03-06
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9811034656

This book explains the theoretical and policy issues associated with the taxation of financial services and includes a jurisdictional overview that illustrates alternative policy choices and the legal consequences of those choices . The book addresses the question: how can financial services in an increasingly globalized market best be taxed through VAT while avoiding economic distortions? It supports the discussion of the key practical problems that have arisen from the particular complexity of the application of VAT to financial services, and allows for the evaluation of best practice by comparing the major current reform models now being implemented.

Capital Gains Taxation

Capital Gains Taxation
Author: Michael Littlewood
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2017-08-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1784716022

Capital gains taxes pose a host of technical and political design problems and yet, while the literature on the theory of capital gains taxation is substantial, little has been published on how governments have addressed these dilemmas. Written by a team of distinguished international experts, Capital Gains Taxation addresses the gap in the literature; it explains how a number of countries tax capital gains and the successes and pitfalls of these methods.

Critical Tax Theory

Critical Tax Theory
Author: Bridget J. Crawford
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2009-06-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1139477455

Tax law is political. This book highlights and explains the major themes and methodologies of a group of scholars who challenge the traditional claim that tax law is neutral and unbiased. The contributors to this volume include pioneers in the field of critical tax theory, as well as key thinkers who have sustained and expanded the investigation into why the tax laws are the way they are and what impacts tax laws have on historically disempowered groups. This volume, assembled by two law professors who work in the field, is an accessible introduction to this new and growing body of scholarship. It is a resource not only for scholars and students in the fields of taxation and economics, but also for those who engage with critical race theory, feminist legal theory, queer theory, class-based analysis, and social justice generally. Tax is the one area of law that affects everyone in our society, and this book is crucial to understanding its impact.

Comparative Company Law

Comparative Company Law
Author: Mathias Siems
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 581
Release: 2018-09-20
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509909354

As attention moves rapidly towards comparative approaches, the research and teaching of company law has somehow lagged behind. The overall purpose of this book is therefore to fill a gap in the literature by identifying whether conceptual differences between countries exist. Rather than concentrate on whether the institutional structure of the corporation varies across jurisdictions, the objective of this book will be pursued by focusing on specific cases and how different countries might treat each of these cases. The book also has a public policy dimension, because the existence or absence of differences may lead to the question of whether formal harmonisation of company law is necessary. The book covers 12 legal systems from different legal traditions and from different parts of the world (though with a special emphasis on European countries). In alphabetical order, those countries are: Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, the UK, and the US. All of these jurisdictions are subjected to scrutiny by deploying a comparative case-based study. On the basis of these case solutions, various conclusions are reached, some of which challenge established orthodoxies in the field of comparative company law.

Comparative International Law

Comparative International Law
Author: Anthea Roberts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2018
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190697571

Explains that international law is not a monolith but can encompass on-going contestation, in which states set forth competing interpretations Maps and explains the cross-country differences in international legal norms in various fields of international law and their application and interpretation in different geographic regions Organized into three broad thematic sections of conceptual matters, domestic institutions and comparative international law, and comparing approaches across issue-areas Chapters authored by contributors who include top international law and comparative law scholars all from diverse backgrounds, experience, and perspectives.

Exploring the Nexus Doctrine In International Tax Law

Exploring the Nexus Doctrine In International Tax Law
Author: Ajit Kumar Singh
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2021-05-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9403533641

In an age when cross-border business transactions are increasingly effected without the transference of physical products, revenue concerns of states have led to a multitude of tax disputes based on the concept of ‘nexus’. This important and timely book is the most authoritative to date to discuss one of the major tax topics of our time – the question of how taxing rights on income generated from cross-border activities in the digital age should be allocated among jurisdictions. Demonstrating in prodigious depth that it is the economic nexus of the tax entity or activity with the state, and not the physical nexus, which meets the jurisdictional requirement, the author – a leading authority on this area who is a Senior Commissioner of Income Tax and a Member of the Dispute Resolution Panel of the Government of India – addresses such dimensions of the subject as the following: whether a strict territorial nexus as a normative principle is ingrained in source rule jurisprudence; detailed scrutiny of such classical doctrines as benefit theory, neutrality theory, and internation equity; comparative critique of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and United Nation (UN) model tax treaties; whether international law and customary principles mandate a strict territorial link with the source state for the assumption of tax jurisdiction; whether the economic nexus-based tax jurisdiction and absence of a physical presence breach the constitutional doctrine of extraterritoriality or due process; and whether retrospective tax legislation breaches the principle of constitutional fairness. The book offers a politically informed analysis of the nexus principle and balances the dynamics of physical presence and economic nexus standards, based on an in-depth survey of the historical evolution of judicial pronouncements and international practices in this regard. Dr Singh’s book exposes an urgently needed missing link in the international source rule literature and takes a giant step towards solving the thorny question of appropriate tax apportionment. It sheds brilliant light on the policies states may adopt when signing new tax treaties, so that unintended results may be foreseen and avoided. Tax practitioners, taxation authorities, and academic researchers in the field of international tax law and policy will greatly appreciate the book’s forthright enhancement of the ability to defend challenges based on the nexus doctrine.