Taxes

April 15th, a day most of us dread, is fast approaching. Have you filed your taxes yet? Economists believe most people are rational calculating machines, but many of us do not behave rationally about filing our taxes. April 15th, a...

There has been an international outcry over the leaked HSBC files, which provide evidence that the bank’s Swiss arm helped wealthy clients put millions of dollars’ worth of assets out of the reach of the tax authorities. Naturally, politicians from...

Countries are competing to lower their tax rates to please the corporate giants, but the result is a massive collective loss of revenue. Only international coordination can wipe out the practice and defeat the negative influence of the Big Four...

The Brisbane G20 Summit offered civil society groups an opportunity to renew demands for a financial transaction tax (FTT). But in the end it proved a missed opportunity to build international cooperation on financial reform. The Brisbane G20 Summit offered...

The revelation of the leaked Luxembourg tax files and the related reporting of the extent of the tax avoidance industry in the UK should come as little surprise. Tax legislation, and its enforcement in the UK, has been based on...

In Nigeria, as well as around the world, a majority of taxpayers view tax not as a contractual contribution to government expense, but as an involuntary tribute to be paid to avoid prosecution and penalty. Merely transcribing taxes from economic...

Over the last two decades, European policy makers have imposed restrictive fiscal policies on member states. They have concentrated on the design of fiscal rules and the structure of budgetary processes but they have never thought of introducing a new...

The US does not need an experiment with a flat tax. A careful study of countries that have embraced a flat tax system demonstrated three main pre-conditions that required a flat tax; none of which the US has. Adopting a...

The recently published World Development Report 2007, which largely concentrates upon investing for human capital (Youth) is really a challenge on the part of developing nations over the world constituting 1.3 billions of young peoples. It is the lack of...