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American Tax Resisters
Romain D. Huret
Harvard University Press, 2014

“The American taxpayer”—angered by government waste and satisfied only with spending cuts—has preoccupied elected officials and political commentators since the Reagan Revolution. But resistance to progressive taxation has older, deeper roots. American Tax Resisters presents the full history of the American anti-tax movement that has defended the pursuit of limited taxes on wealth and battled efforts to secure social justice through income redistribution for the past 150 years.

From the Tea Party to the Koch brothers, the major players in today’s anti-tax crusade emerge in Romain Huret’s account as the heirs of a formidable—and far from ephemeral—political movement. Diverse coalitions of Americans have rallied around the flag of tax opposition since the Civil War, their grievances fueled by a determination to defend private life against government intrusion and a steadfast belief in the economic benefits and just rewards of untaxed income. Local tax resisters were actively mobilized by business and corporate interests throughout the early twentieth century, undeterred by such setbacks as the Sixteenth Amendment establishing a federal income tax. Zealously petitioning Congress and chipping at the edges of progressive tax policies, they bequeathed hard-won experience to younger generations of conservatives in their pursuit of laissez-faire capitalism.

Capturing the decisive moments in U.S. history when tax resisters convinced a majority of Americans to join their crusade, Romain Huret explains how a once marginal ideology became mainstream, elevating economic success and individual entrepreneurialism over social sacrifice and solidarity.

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American Taxation, American Slavery
Robin L. Einhorn
University of Chicago Press, 2006

For all the recent attention to the slaveholding of the founding fathers, we still know remarkably little about the influence of slavery on American politics. American Taxation, American Slavery tackles this problem in a new way. Rather than parsing the ideological pronouncements of charismatic slaveholders, it examines the concrete policy decisions that slaveholders and non-slaveholders made in the critical realm of taxation. The result is surprising—that the enduring power of antigovernment rhetoric in the United States stems from the nation’s history of slavery rather than its history of liberty.

            We are all familiar with the states’ rights arguments of proslavery politicians who wanted to keep the federal government weak and decentralized. But here Robin Einhorn shows the deep, broad, and continuous influence of slavery on this idea in American politics. From the earliest colonial times right up to the Civil War, slaveholding elites feared strong democratic government as a threat to the institution of slavery. American Taxation, American Slavery shows how their heated battles over taxation, the power to tax, and the distribution of tax burdens were rooted not in debates over personal liberty but rather in the rights of slaveholders to hold human beings as property. Along the way, Einhorn exposes the antidemocratic origins of the popular Jeffersonian rhetoric about weak government by showing that governments were actually more democratic—and stronger—where most people were free.

            A strikingly original look at the role of slavery in the making of the United States, American Taxation, American Slavery will prove essential to anyone interested in the history of American government and politics.

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Analyses in the Economics of Aging
Edited by David A. Wise
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Analyses in the Economics of Aging summarizes a massive amount of new research on several popular and less-examined topics pertaining to the relationship between economics and aging. Among the many themes explored in this volume, considerable attention is given to new research on retirement savings, the cost and efficiency of medical resources, and the predictors of health events.

The volume begins with a discussion of the risks and merits of 401(k) plans. Subsequent chapters present recent analysis of the growth of Medicare costs; the different aspects of disability; and the evolution of health, wealth, and living arrangements over the life course. Keeping with the global tradition of previous volumes, Analyses in the Economics of Aging also includes comparative studies on savings behavior in Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States; an examination of household savings among different age groups in Germany; and a chapter devoted to population aging and the plight of widows in India.

Carefully compiled and containing some of the most cutting-edge research and analysis available, this volume should be of interest to any specialist or policymaker concerned with ongoing changes in savings and retirement behaviors.
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Behavioral Simulation Methods in Tax Policy Analysis
Edited by Martin Feldstein
University of Chicago Press, 1983
These thirteen papers and accompanying commentaries are the first fruits of an ongoing research project that has concentrated on developing simulation models that incorporate the behavioral responses of individuals and businesses to alternative tax rules and rates and on expanding computational general equilibrium models that analyze the long-run effects of changes on the economy as a whole.

The principal focus of the project has been on the microsimulation of individual behavior. Thus, this volume includes studies of individual responses to an over reduction in tax rates and to changes in the highest tax rates; a study of alternative tax treatments of the family; and studies of such specific aspects of household behavior as tax treatment of home ownership, charitable contributions, and individual saving behavior. Microsimulation techniques are also used to estimate the effects of alternative policies on the long-run financial status of the social security program and to examine the effects of alternative tax rules on corporate investment and of foreign-source income on overseas investment.

The papers devoted to the development of general equilibrium simulation models to include an examination of the implications of international trade and capital flows, a study of the effects of capital taxation that uses a closed economy equilibrium model, and an examination of the effect of switching to an inflation-indexed tax system. In the volume's final paper, a life-cycle model in which individuals maximize lifetime utility subject to a lifetime budget constraint is used to simulate the effects of tax rules on personal savings.
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Between the Temple and the Tax Collector
The Intersection of Mormonism and the State
Samuel D. Brunson
University of Illinois Press, 2025

The founding and development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints run parallel to the rise of the modern tax system and administrative state. Samuel D. Brunson looks at the relationships between the Church and various federal, state, local, and international tax regimes.

The church and its members engage with the state as taxpayers and as members of a faith exempt from taxes. As Brunson shows, LDS members and the Church have at various times enacted, enforced, and collected taxes while also challenging taxes in the courts and politics. Brunson delves into the ways LDS members used their status as taxpayers to affirm themselves as citizens and how outsiders have attacked the Church’s tax-exempt status to delegitimize it. Throughout, Brunson uses the daily interactions between the Latter-day Saints and taxation to explain important and inevitable holes in the wall between church and state.

Enlightening and informed, Between the Temple and the Tax Collector provides general readers and experts alike with a new perspective on a fundamental issue.

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The Black Tax
150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America
Andrew W. Kahrl
University of Chicago Press, 2024
Revealing a history that is deep, broad, and infuriating, The Black Tax casts a bold light on the racist practices long hidden in the shadows of America’s tax regimes.
 
American taxation is unfair, and it is most unfair to the very people who critically need its support. Not only do taxpayers with fewer resources—less wealth, power, and land—pay more than the well-off, but they are forced to fight for their rights within an unjust system that undermines any attempts to improve their position or economic standing. In The Black Tax, Andrew W. Kahrl reveals the shocking history and ruinous consequences of inequitable and predatory tax laws in this country—above all, widespread and devastating racial dispossession.
 
Throughout the twentieth century, African Americans acquired substantial amounts of property nationwide. But racist practices, obscure processes, and outright theft diminished their holdings and their power. Of these, Kahrl shows, few were more powerful, or more quietly destructive, than property taxes. He examines all the structural features and hidden traps within America’s tax system that have forced Black Americans to pay more for less and stripped them of their land and investments, and he reveals the staggering cost. The story of America’s now enormous concentration of wealth at the top—and the equally enormous absence of wealth among most Black households—has its roots here.
 
Kahrl exposes the painful history of these practices, from Reconstruction up to the present, and tells, for the first time, the story of Black Americans’ experiences as taxpayers and their fight for a more fair and equitable system for raising and spending the public’s money. This is a history that deepens our understanding of the disadvantages and persistent inequalities that African American households continue to face and reveals hidden engines of economic inequality in America. Detailing the hows and whys of America’s profoundly unequal tax system, The Black Tax equips readers with the knowledge needed to combat inequality and injustice today.
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Building Local States
China during the Republican and Post-Mao Eras
Elizabeth Remick
Harvard University Press, 2004

This book examines two eras of Chinese history that have commonly been viewed as periods of state disintegration or retreat. And they were—at the central level. When re-examined at the local level, however, both are revealed as periods of state building. In both the Nanjing decade of Guomindang rule (1927-1937) and the early post-Mao reform era (1980-1992), both national and local factors shaped local state building and created variations in local state structures and practices. This book focuses on one key area of the state, taxation and public finance, to trace the processes of local state building in these two eras. Using the records of local tax and finance offices in the Tianjin area and in Guangdong province, the author maps the process by which these county-level offices grew.

This book highlights variation in local state structures and practices between localities and between the central and local governments. As the author shows, this variation is important because it results in regional differences in state-society relations and affects central state capacity in terms of the local state's ability to implement central state policies as well as its own.

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Canada-U.S. Tax Comparisons
Edited by John B. Shoven and John Whalley
University of Chicago Press, 1992
In the increasingly global economy, domestic tax policies have taken on a new importance for international economics. This unique volume compares the tax reform experiences of Canada and the United States, two countries with the world's largest bilateral flow of trade and investment.

With the signing of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement and the tax reforms of the 1980s, there has been some harmonization of tax systems. But geographic, cultural, and political characteristics shape distinct national social policies that may impede harmonization. As the U.S. and Canadian economies become even more integrated, differences in tax systems will have important effects, in particular on the relative rates of economic growth.

In this timely study, scholars from both countries show that, while the United States and Canada exhibit similar corporate tax structures and income tax systems, they have very different approaches to sales tax and social security taxes. Despite these differences, the two countries generate roughly the same amounts of revenue, produce similar costs of capital, and produce comparable distributions of income.
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Capital Taxation
Martin Feldstein
Harvard University Press, 1983

The new chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, Martin Feldstein is also the leading economist in the field of tax analysis. In this important volume he shows how systems of taxation influence the rate and nature of capital formation—a key policy issue in the development of any economy.

The first part of Capital Taxation deals with the overall rate of saving and examines the effects of taxes on both personal and corporate saving as well as on the interaction between the two. The second section describes the effects of tax rules on household portfolios: selection and size of investment and the process of portfolio adjustment. In Part 3, Feldstein turns to corporate investment in plant and equipment and in inventories. Part 4 analyzes the impact of capital taxation in a growing economy. Feldstein's perceptive identification of important economic and policy questions, adroit use of modeling and new data sources, and careful attention to dynamics make this book a powerful addition to the economic literature.

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Challenges of Globalization in the Measurement of National Accounts
Edited by Nadim Ahmad, Brent R. Moulton, J. David Richardson, and Peter van de Ven
University of Chicago Press, 2023

An essential collection at the intersection of globalization, production supply chains, corporate finance regulation, and economic measurement.

The substantial increase in the complexity of global supply chains and other production arrangements over the past three decades has challenged some traditional measures of national income account aggregates and raised the potential for distortions in conventional calculations of GDP and productivity. This volume examines a variety of multinational business activities and assesses their impact on economic measurement. Several chapters consider how global supply chains complicate the interpretation of traditional trade statistics and how new measurement techniques can provide information about global production arrangements. Other chapters examine the role of intangible capital in global production, including the output of factoryless goods producers and the problems of measuring R&D in a globalized world. The studies in this volume also explore potential ways to enhance the quality of the national accounts by improving data collection and analysis and by updating the standards for measurement.

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Community without Consent
New Perspectives on the Stamp Act
Edited by Zachary McLeod Hutchins
Dartmouth College Press, 2016
The first book-length study of the Stamp Act in decades, this timely collection draws together essays from a broad range of disciplines to provide a thoroughly original investigation of the influence of 1760s British tax legislation on colonial culture, and vice versa. While earlier scholarship has largely focused on the political origins and legacy of the Stamp Act, this volume illuminates the social and cultural impact of a legislative crisis that would end in revolution. Importantly, these essays question the traditional nationalist narrative of Stamp Act scholarship, offering a variety of counter identities and perspectives. Community without Consent recovers the stories of individuals often ignored or overlooked in existing scholarship, including women, Native Americans, and enslaved African Americans, by drawing on sources unavailable to or unexamined by earlier researchers. This urgent and original collection will appeal to the broadest of interdisciplinary audiences.
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Creative Politics
Taxes and Public Goods in a Federal System
Glenn Beamer
University of Michigan Press, 2000
State legislators are constantly making tradeoffs between changing taxes and providing public services. Not only must they reconcile their own policy preferences with the preferences of their constituents, but they must consider the impact of actions taken by both the federal government and competing states. Glenn Beamer uses a series of in-depth case studies in eleven states to show how legislators made decisions dealing with taxation, economic development, education financing, and Medicaid.
Beamer identifies six factors that influence legislators' decisions: accountability, dependability, equity, obscurability, and horizontal and vertical transferability. Within the context created by citizen demands, intergovernmental politics, policy histories, court interventions, and state constitutions, this study analyzes how legislators employ these principles to develop and enact policies.
In addition to modeling state politics within the context of federalism, Creative Politics, reflecting the author's extensive interviews with legislators, is novel in its focus on politicians' views about public services, the strategies to finance them, and efforts to develop and maintain political support for them.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, economics, and public administration, and, more specifically, of federalism, state politics and policy, and legislative decision-making.
Glenn Beamer is Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research, University of California, Berkeley, and Assistant Professor of Government, University of Virginia.
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Does Atlas Shrug?
The Economic Consequences of Taxing the Rich
Joel B. Slemrod
Harvard University Press, 2000

Since the introduction of the income tax in 1913, controversy has raged about how heavily to tax the rich. Opponents of high tax rates claim that heavy assessments have negative incentives on the productivity of some of our most talented citizens; supporters stress the importance of the rich shouldering their "fair share," and decry the loopholes that permit many to escape their obligations. Notably absent from this debate is hard evidence about the actual impact of taxes on the behavior of the affluent.

This book presents evidence by leading economists of the effects of taxes on the formation of businesses, the supply of labor, the form of executive compensation, the accumulation of wealth, the allocation of portfolios, and the realization of capital gains. Among its findings are that the labor supply of the rich remained unchanged in the face of large tax cuts in 1986, and that in late 1992 executives exercised billions of dollars' worth of stock options in order to beat the tax increases expected in 1993. The book also presents a history of efforts to tax the rich, a demographic snapshot of the financially affluent, and a road map to widely used tax-avoidance strategies.

Does Atlas Shrug? will be of great interest to policymakers and interested citizens who want to know how much tax revenue could really be gained by increasing tax rates on the rich, or whether low capital gains tax rates really spur economic growth.

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Does Business Learn?
Tax Breaks, Uncertainty, and Political Strategies
Sandra L. Suarez
University of Michigan Press, 2000
Firms in the United States have many political advantages when compared to other groups in society. They are the best-represented group in our nation's capital; they operate more Political Action Committees; and their lobbyists are among the most experienced political operatives. Yet firms are uncertain about their political power and hence about the effectiveness of their political strategies. This book deals with how firms decide which strategy to pursue among the existing alternatives when it comes to defending policies that play to their interests.
Sandra Suárez looks at the efforts of business to influence government policy in a detailed study of the efforts of major American corporations to protect the tax credit applicable to profits from investments in Puerto Rico. This rare longitudinal case-study explores the abilities of U.S. pharmaceutical and electronics companies to adapt their political strategies to a fluid and uncertain political environment. Drawing on interviews with tax lawyers, corporate lobbyists and government officials, the author follows the behavior of the same group of companies over the past twenty years.
This book advances a learning-based explanation of business political behavior, which argues that past political experience accounts for patterns of political behavior that government structures and salient issues alone cannot explain. Centered on attempts to protect an important tax break for business, the possessions tax battles provide an appropriate case for examining the value of the business learning approach.
Although written with a political science audience in mind, this book addresses issues that will resonate widely with sociologists, management researchers and students alike.
Sandra L. Suárez is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, Temple University.
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The Effects of Taxation on Capital Accumulation
Edited by Martin Feldstein
University of Chicago Press, 1987
Research on capital formation has long been a major focus of studies sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research because of the crucial role of capital accumulation in the process of economic growth. The papers in this volume examine the influence of taxes on capital formation, with specific focus on the determinants of saving and the process of investment in plant and equipment.
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The Effects of Taxation on Multinational Corporations
Edited by Martin Feldstein, James R. Hines Jr., and R. Glenn Hubbard
University of Chicago Press, 1995
The tax rules of the United States and other countries have intended and unintended effects on the operations of multinational corporations, influencing everything from the formation and allocation of capital to competitive strategies. The growing importance of international business has led economists to reconsider whether current systems of taxing international income are viable in a world of significant capital market integration and global commercial competition.

In an attempt to quantify the effect of tax policy on international investment choices, this volume presents in-depth analyses of the interaction of international tax rules and the investment decisions of multinational enterprises. Ten papers assess the role played by multinational firms and their investment in the U.S. economy and the design of international tax rules for multinational investment; analyze channels through which international tax rules affect the costs of international business activities; and examine ways in which international tax rules affect financing decisions of multinational firms. As a group, the papers demonstrate that international tax rules have significant effects on firms' investment and other financing decisions.
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front cover of Empirical Foundations of Household Taxation
Empirical Foundations of Household Taxation
Edited by Martin Feldstein and James M. Poterba
University of Chicago Press, 1996
Tax policy debates—and reforms—depend heavily on estimates of how alternative tax rules would affect behavior. Yet there is considerable controversy about the key empirical links among tax rates, household decisions, and revenue collections.

The nine papers in this volume exploit the substantial variation in U.S. tax policy during the last two decades to investigate how taxes affect a range of household behavior, including labor-force participation, saving behavior, choice of health insurance plan, choice of child care arrangements, portfolio choice, and tax evasion. They also present new analytical results on the effects of different types of tax policy. All of this research relies on household-level data—drawn either from public-use tax return files or from large household-level surveys—to explore various aspects of the relationship between taxes and household behavior.

As debates about the effects of proposed tax reforms continue in the 1990s, this volume will be of interest to policy makers and scholars in the field of public finance.
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Fair Not Flat
How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler
Edward J. McCaffery
University of Chicago Press, 2002
Everyone knows that the current tax system is unfair. Some of the richest people in America pay no tax, while a huge share of the tax burden falls on the rest of us. A mere glance at the tax code confirms that it is far too complex, with volumes of rules that no ordinary person could possibly comprehend. What is to be done? Some conservatives have called for a so-called flat tax. But a flat tax is not necessarily a simple tax, and "flat" means "more" for most taxpayers: a rise in middle-class taxes to finance tax cuts for the rich. Is there another choice?
In clear, easy-to-understand language, Edward J. McCaffery proposes a straightforward and fair alternative. A "fair not flat" tax that is consistent and progressive would tax spending, not income and savings. And if it were collected at its lower levels through a national sales tax, most people would not have to file a return. A supplemental tax on spending for the wealthiest individuals would make the national sales tax progressive. Under McCaffery's system, a family of four would pay no tax on their first $20,000 in spending, and 15 percent on the next $60,000. Only the few families who spend more than $80,000 a year would be subject to the supplemental tax. Necessities would be taxed less than ordinary and luxury items. No one would be taxed directly on savings. The estate and gift or so-called death tax would be abolished, for the simple reason that dead people don't spend. The "fair not flat" tax would fall on heirs when and as they spend their good fortune. Perhaps best of all, most Americans would not have to fill out tax returns.

Simpler, more efficient, fairer, and more reflective of America's current social values, McCaffery's "fair not flat" tax could help get us out of the tax mess that politicians and special interests have gotten us into, improving the whole country in the process. Read Fair Not Flat to find out how.

“In Fair Not Flat, Mr. McCaffery lays out the case for a consumption tax. He does so in a reader-friendly way, presenting his argument with very few footnotes, equations or technical terms. The consumption of the book, so to speak, is not at all taxing. And its argument is well worth pondering.”—Bruce Bartlett, Wall Street Journal

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Federal Tax Policy and Charitable Giving
Charles T. Clotfelter
University of Chicago Press, 1985
The United States is distinctive among Western countries in its reliance on nonprofit institutions to perform major social functions. This reliance is rooted in American history and is fostered by federal tax provisions for charitable giving. In this study, Charles T. Clotfelter demonstrates that changes in tax policy—effected through legislation or inflation—can have a significant impact on the level and composition of giving.

Clotfelter focuses on empirical analysis of the effects of tax policy on charitable giving in four major areas: individual contributions, volunteering, corporate giving, and charitable bequests. For each area, discussions of economic theory and relevant tax law precede a review of the data and methodology used in econometric studies of charitable giving. In addition, new econometric analyses are presented, as well as empirical data on the effect of taxes on foundations.

While taxes are not the most important determinant of contributions, the results of the analyses presented here suggest that charitable deductions, as well as tax rates and other aspects of the tax system, are significant factors in determining the size and distribution of charitable giving. This work is a model for policy-oriented research efforts, but it also supplies a major (and very timely) addition to the evidence that must inform future proposals for tax reform.
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The Free List
Property Without Taxes
Alfred Balk
Russell Sage Foundation, 1971
A recent Supreme Court decision confirmed the churches' right to tax exemption for religious property. In this highly relevant book, Alfred Balk places this question in social perspective and demonstrates how tax exemption and immunity affect the fiscal load of local communities and the well-being of our whole society. Among the "free list" or tax-free properties which the author examines are churches, hospitals, schools, and government buildings. Seven specific proposals for reform are set forth.
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A General Equilibrium Model for Tax Policy Evaluation
Charles L. Ballard, Don Fullerton, John B. Shoven, and John Whalley
University of Chicago Press, 1985

This book reports the authors' research on one of the most sophisticated general equilibrium models designed for tax policy analysis. Significantly disaggregated and incorporating the complete array of federal, state, and local taxes, the model represents the U.S. economy and tax system in a large computer package. The authors consider modifications of the tax system, including those being raised in current policy debates, such as consumption-based taxes and integration of the corporate and personal income tax systems. A counterfactual economy associated with each of these alternatives is generated, and the possible outcomes are compared.

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Governing and Ruling
The Political Logic of Taxation in China
Changdong Zhang
University of Michigan Press, 2021

Rapid social economic changes, the transition from a planned economy to a market economy, or even economic liberalization can lead to political instability and the collapse of authoritarian regimes. Despite experiencing all of these unprecedented changes in the past forty years, China under the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership has so far successfully transformed and improved both its governance capacity and its ruling capacity. Governing and Ruling: The Political Logic of Taxation in China addresses this regime resilience puzzle by examining the political logic of its taxation system, especially the ways in which taxation helps China handle three governance problems: maneuvering social control, improving agent discipline, and eliciting cooperation. Changdong Zhang argues that a taxation system plays an important role in sustaining authoritarian rule, in China and elsewhere, by combining co-optation and repression functions. The book collects valuable firsthand and secondhand data; studies China’s taxation system, intergovernmental fiscal relationships, composition of fiscal revenue sources, and tax administration; and discusses how each dimension influences the three governance problems.

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Governing Nonprofit Organizations
Federal and State Law and Regulation
Marion R. Fremont-Smith
Harvard University Press, 2008

The nonprofit sector is a vital component of our society and is allowed the greatest freedom to operate. The public understandably assumes that since nonprofit organizations are established to do good, the people who run nonprofits are altruistic, and the laws governing nonprofits have reflected this assumption. But as Marion Fremont-Smith argues, the rules that govern how nonprofits operate are inadequate, and the regulatory mechanisms designed to enforce the rules need improvement.

Despite repeated instances of negligent management, self-interest at the expense of the charity, and outright fraud, nonprofits continue to receive minimal government regulation. In this time of increased demand for corporate accountability, the need to strengthen regulation of nonprofits is obvious. Fremont-Smith addresses this need from a historical, legal, and organizational perspective. She combines summaries and analysis of the substantive legal rules governing the behavior of charitable officers, directors, and trustees with descriptions of the federal and state regulatory schemes designed to enforce these rules. Her unique and exhaustive historical survey of the law of nonprofit organizations provides a foundation for her analysis of the effectiveness of current law and proposals for its improvement.

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The Guangdong Model and Taxation in China
Formation, Development, and Characteristics of China's Modern Financial System
Jin-A Kang
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
This book explores the formation, development, and characteristics of modern China's finance, focusing especially on Guangdong province as a case study to illustrate both the macro-level trends and the micro-level reality. The chronological range of this book is mainly from the late Qing period to the early Republican Era ending in 1937, when the full-scale Second Sino-Japanese War broke out. After the concept of modern finance was introduced to China for the first time in the late Qing period, the efforts to build modern finance continued in the Republican Era both nationally and locally. But this process was interrupted by the outbreak of the war against Japan in 1937 and, having been derailed, did not subsequently recover due to the subsequent civil war between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. This interrupted process of financial modernization was resumed with Reform and Opening-up, launched in 1978. Therefore, in order to illustrate the structural transformation and persistent characteristics of China’s fiscal system, this book also includes discussions of the early Qing period and current Chinese finance.
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The Hidden Wealth of Nations
The Scourge of Tax Havens
Gabriel Zucman
University of Chicago Press, 2015
We are well aware of the rise of the 1% as the rapid growth of economic inequality has put the majority of the world’s wealth in the pockets of fewer and fewer. One much-discussed solution to this imbalance is to significantly increase the rate at which we tax the wealthy. But with an enormous amount of the world’s wealth hidden in tax havens—in countries like Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the Cayman Islands—this wealth cannot be fully accounted for and taxed fairly. No one, from economists to bankers to politicians, has been able to quantify exactly how much of the world’s assets are currently hidden—until now. Gabriel Zucman is the first economist to offer reliable insight into the actual extent of the world’s money held in tax havens. And it’s staggering.

In The Hidden Wealth of Nations, Zucman offers an inventive and sophisticated approach to quantifying how big the problem is, how tax havens work and are organized, and how we can begin to approach a solution. His research reveals that tax havens are a quickly growing danger to the world economy. In the past five years, the amount of wealth in tax havens has increased over 25%—there has never been as much money held offshore as there is today. This hidden wealth accounts for at least $7.6 trillion, equivalent to 8% of the global financial assets of households. Fighting the notion that any attempts to vanquish tax havens are futile, since some countries will always offer more advantageous tax rates than others, as well the counter-argument that since the financial crisis tax havens have disappeared, Zucman shows how both sides are actually very wrong. In The Hidden Wealth of Nations he offers an ambitious agenda for reform, focused on ways in which countries can change the incentives of tax havens. Only by first understanding the enormity of the secret wealth can we begin to estimate the kind of actions that would force tax havens to give up their practices.

Zucman’s work has quickly become the gold standard for quantifying the amount of the world’s assets held in havens. In this concise book, he lays out in approachable language how the international banking system works and the dangerous extent to which the large-scale evasion of taxes is undermining the global market as a whole. If we are to find a way to solve the problem of increasing inequality, The Hidden Wealth of Nations is essential reading.
 
 
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The Ideologies of Taxation
Louis Eisenstein
Harvard University Press, 2010

Originally published in 1961, The Ideologies of Taxation is a classic of taxation—a long-unavailable volume that remains uniquely applicable today. Louis Eisenstein starts from the idea that the tax system in a democracy is shaped by competing factions, each seeking to minimize its burden. Because few people are convinced by appeals to self-interest, factions must give reasons, which are skillfully elaborated into systems of belief or ideologies.

Eisenstein’s aim is to examine (and debunk) three major ideologies used to justify various reforms of the tax system. The ideology of ability holds that taxes should be apportioned based on ability to pay and that this is properly measured by income or wealth. The ideology of deterrents is concerned with high taxes on private enterprise—low and flat taxes are desired lest the wealthy reduce their work efforts and savings. The ideology of equity is focused on equal treatment of similarly situated individuals. Eisenstein shows, with sharp wit and an instinct for the jugular, how each of these ideologies is plagued with contradictions, incompleteness, and, in some cases, self-serving claims.

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Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation
Martin Feldstein
University of Chicago Press, 1983

Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation brings together fourteen papers that show the importance of the interaction between tax rules and monetary policy. Based on theoretical and empirical research, these papers emphasize the importance of including explicit specifications of the tax system in such study.

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Institutional Foundations of Public Finance
Economic and Legal Perspectives
Alan J. Auerbach
Harvard University Press, 2009

Institutional Foundations of Public Finance integrates economic and legal perspectives on taxation and fiscal policy, offering a provocative assessment of the most important issues in public finance today.

Part I, an in-depth look at the tax reform debate, examines the differences between an income and a consumption tax and poses significant questions about the systematic transition from one to the other, as well as about its implementation. Part II takes a focused look at a broad range of fiscal topics, including fiscal federalism, corporate finance, and fiscal language. As a whole, the volume reflects a keen interest in analyzing real-world problems, including fiscal regimes and institutions, that have major policy implications.

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front cover of International Taxation and Multinational Activity
International Taxation and Multinational Activity
Edited by James R. Hines Jr.
University of Chicago Press, 2001
Because the actions of multinational corporations have a clear and direct effect on the flow of capital throughout the world, how and why these firms behave the way they do is a major issue for national governments and their policymakers. With an unprecedented ability to adjust the scale, character, and location of their global operations, international corporations have become increasingly sensitive to the kind and degree of tax obligations imposed on them by both host and home countries. Tax rules affect the volume of foreign direct investment, corporate borrowing, transfer pricing, dividend and royalty payments, and research and development. National governments that tax the profits of international firms face important challenges in designing tax policies to attract them. This collection examines the global ramifications of tax policies, offering up-to-date, theoretically innovative, and empirically sound perspectives on a problem of immense significance to future economic growth around the globe.
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Learning to Love Form 1040
Two Cheers for the Return-Based Mass Income Tax
Lawrence Zelenak
University of Chicago Press, 2013
No one likes paying taxes, much less the process of filing tax returns. For years, would-be reformers have advocated replacing the return-based mass income tax with a flat tax, federal sales tax, or some combination thereof. Congress itself has commissioned studies on the feasibility of a system of exact withholding. But might the much-maligned return-based taxation method serve an important yet overlooked civic purpose?

In Learning to Love Form 1040, Lawrence Zelenak argues that filing taxes can strengthen fiscal citizenship by prompting taxpayers to reflect on the contract they have with their government and the value—or perceived lack of value—they receive in exchange for their money. Zelenak traces the mass income tax to its origins as a means for raising revenue during World War II. Even then, debates raged over the merits of consumption-based versus income taxation, as well as whether taxes should be withheld from payroll or paid at the time of filing. The result is the income tax system we have today—a system whose maddening complexity, intended to accommodate citizens in widely different circumstances, threatens to outweigh any civic benefits.

If sitcoms and political cartoons are any indication, public understanding of the income tax is badly in need of a corrective. Zelenak clears up some of the most common misconceptions and closes with suggestions for how the current system could be substantially simplified to better serve its civic purpose.

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Liberal Suppression
Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech
Philip Hamburger
University of Chicago Press, 2018
In the course of exempting religious, educational, and charitable organizations from federal income tax, section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code requires them to refrain from campaign speech and much speech to influence legislation. These speech restrictions have seemed merely technical adjustments, which prevent the political use of a tax subsidy. But the cultural and legal realities are more disturbing.

Tracing the history of American liberalism, including theological liberalism and its expression in nativism, Hamburger shows the centrality of turbulent popular anxieties about the Catholic Church and other potentially orthodox institutions. He argues persuasively that such theopolitical fears about the political speech of churches and related organizations underlay the adoption, in 1934 and 1954, of section 501(c)(3)’s speech limits. He thereby shows that the speech restrictions have been part of a broad majority assault on minority rights and that they are grossly unconstitutional.

Along the way, Hamburger explores the role of the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist organizations, the development of American theology, and the cultural foundations of liberal “democratic” political theory. He also traces important legal developments such as the specialization of speech rights and the use of law to homogenize beliefs. Ultimately, he examines a wide range of contemporary speech restrictions and the growing shallowness of public life in America.
His account is an unflinching look at the complex history of American liberalism and at the implications for speech, the diversity of belief, and the nation’s future.
 
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Mergers and Acquisitions
Edited by Alan J. Auerbach
University of Chicago Press, 1988
Do mergers lead to financial instability? How are shareholders' interests best served? How significant a role do taxes play? What are the implications for the structure and concentration of industry? Mergers and Acquisitions, prepared in an nontechnical format, answers these and other questions that have arisen from the takeover boom that began in the mid-1980s.
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The Minnesota Department of Taxation
An Administrative History
Lloyd Short
University of Minnesota Press, 1955
The Minnesota Department of Taxation: An Administrative History was first published in 1955. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Number 3 in Studies in Administration, a series sponsored by the Public Administration Training Center at the University of Minnesota; established in 1936 to provide instruction, research facilities, and information in the field of public administration.This volume presents an account of tax administration history that seeks to better acquaint the citizens of Minnesota with the origin and development of their tax system and its operation by state government. Topics include: the organization and political framework of the Minnesota tax administration; central staff functions; general and specialized property tax administration; death and gift taxes; and the administration of income, cigarette, and petroleum taxes.
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The Modernization of the Chinese Salt Administration
S. A. M. Adshead
Harvard University Press, 1970

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"Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender"
Taxpayers' Associations, Pocketbook Politics, and the Law during the Great Depression
Linda Upham-Bornstein
Temple University Press, 2023
During the Great Depression, the proliferation of local taxpayers’ associations was dramatic and unprecedented. The justly concerned members of these organizations examined the operations of state, city, and county governments, then pressed local officials for operational and fiscal reforms. These associations aimed to reduce the cost of state and local governments to make operations more efficient and less expensive. 
 
“Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender” presents a comprehensive overview of these grassroots taxpayers’ leagues beginning in the 1860s and shows how they evolved during their heyday in the 1930s. Linda Upham-Bornstein chronicles the ways these taxpayers associations organized as well as the tools they used—constructive economy, political efforts, tax strikes, and tax revolt through litigation—to achieve their objectives.
 
Taxpayer activity was a direct consequence of—and a response to—the economic crisis of the Great Depression and the expansion of the size and scope of government. “Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender” connects collective tax resistance in the 1930s to the populist tradition in American politics and to other broad impulses in American political and legal history.
 
[more]

front cover of National Tax Journal, volume 75 number 4 (December 2022)
National Tax Journal, volume 75 number 4 (December 2022)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2022
This is volume 75 issue 4 of National Tax Journal. The goal of the National Tax Journal (NTJ) is to encourage and disseminate high quality original research on governmental tax and expenditure policies. The journal publishes peer reviewed articles that include economic, theoretical, and empirical analyses of tax and expenditure issues with an emphasis on policy implications. Each issue includes a Forum, which consists of invited papers by leading scholars that examine in depth a single current tax or expenditure policy issue. The NTJ has been published quarterly since 1948 under the auspices of the National Tax Association (NTA).
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front cover of National Tax Journal, volume 76 number 1 (March 2023)
National Tax Journal, volume 76 number 1 (March 2023)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2023
This is volume 76 issue 1 of National Tax Journal. The goal of the National Tax Journal (NTJ) is to encourage and disseminate high quality original research on governmental tax and expenditure policies. The journal publishes peer reviewed articles that include economic, theoretical, and empirical analyses of tax and expenditure issues with an emphasis on policy implications. Each issue includes a Forum, which consists of invited papers by leading scholars that examine in depth a single current tax or expenditure policy issue. The NTJ has been published quarterly since 1948 under the auspices of the National Tax Association (NTA).
[more]

front cover of National Tax Journal, volume 76 number 2 (June 2023)
National Tax Journal, volume 76 number 2 (June 2023)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2023
This is volume 76 issue 2 of National Tax Journal. The goal of the National Tax Journal (NTJ) is to encourage and disseminate high quality original research on governmental tax and expenditure policies. The journal publishes peer reviewed articles that include economic, theoretical, and empirical analyses of tax and expenditure issues with an emphasis on policy implications. Each issue includes a Forum, which consists of invited papers by leading scholars that examine in depth a single current tax or expenditure policy issue. The NTJ has been published quarterly since 1948 under the auspices of the National Tax Association (NTA).
[more]

front cover of National Tax Journal, volume 76 number 3 (September 2023)
National Tax Journal, volume 76 number 3 (September 2023)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2023
This is volume 76 issue 3 of National Tax Journal. The goal of the National Tax Journal (NTJ) is to encourage and disseminate high quality original research on governmental tax and expenditure policies. The journal publishes peer reviewed articles that include economic, theoretical, and empirical analyses of tax and expenditure issues with an emphasis on policy implications. Each issue includes a Forum, which consists of invited papers by leading scholars that examine in depth a single current tax or expenditure policy issue. The NTJ has been published quarterly since 1948 under the auspices of the National Tax Association (NTA).
[more]

front cover of National Tax Journal, volume 76 number 4 (December 2023)
National Tax Journal, volume 76 number 4 (December 2023)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2023
This is volume 76 issue 4 of National Tax Journal. The goal of the National Tax Journal (NTJ) is to encourage and disseminate high quality original research on governmental tax and expenditure policies. The journal publishes peer reviewed articles that include economic, theoretical, and empirical analyses of tax and expenditure issues with an emphasis on policy implications. Each issue includes a Forum, which consists of invited papers by leading scholars that examine in depth a single current tax or expenditure policy issue. The NTJ has been published quarterly since 1948 under the auspices of the National Tax Association (NTA).
[more]

front cover of National Tax Journal, volume 77 number 1 (March 2024)
National Tax Journal, volume 77 number 1 (March 2024)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2024
This is volume 77 issue 1 of National Tax Journal. The goal of the National Tax Journal (NTJ) is to encourage and disseminate high quality original research on governmental tax and expenditure policies. The journal publishes peer reviewed articles that include economic, theoretical, and empirical analyses of tax and expenditure issues with an emphasis on policy implications. Each issue includes a Forum, which consists of invited papers by leading scholars that examine in depth a single current tax or expenditure policy issue. The NTJ has been published quarterly since 1948 under the auspices of the National Tax Association (NTA).
[more]

front cover of National Tax Journal, volume 77 number 2 (June 2024)
National Tax Journal, volume 77 number 2 (June 2024)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2024
This is volume 77 issue 2 of National Tax Journal. The goal of the National Tax Journal (NTJ) is to encourage and disseminate high quality original research on governmental tax and expenditure policies. The journal publishes peer reviewed articles that include economic, theoretical, and empirical analyses of tax and expenditure issues with an emphasis on policy implications. Each issue includes a Forum, which consists of invited papers by leading scholars that examine in depth a single current tax or expenditure policy issue. The NTJ has been published quarterly since 1948 under the auspices of the National Tax Association (NTA).
[more]

front cover of National Tax Journal, volume 77 number 3 (September 2024)
National Tax Journal, volume 77 number 3 (September 2024)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2024
This is volume 77 issue 3 of National Tax Journal. The goal of the National Tax Journal (NTJ) is to encourage and disseminate high quality original research on governmental tax and expenditure policies. The journal publishes peer reviewed articles that include economic, theoretical, and empirical analyses of tax and expenditure issues with an emphasis on policy implications. Each issue includes a Forum, which consists of invited papers by leading scholars that examine in depth a single current tax or expenditure policy issue. The NTJ has been published quarterly since 1948 under the auspices of the National Tax Association (NTA).
[more]

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A New Deal for Old Age
Toward a Progressive Retirement
Anne L. Alstott
Harvard University Press, 2016

As America’s haves and have-nots drift further apart, rising inequality has undermined one of the nation’s proudest social achievements: the Social Security retirement system. Unprecedented changes in longevity, marriage, and the workplace have made the experience of old age increasingly unequal. For educated Americans, the traditional retirement age of 65 now represents late middle age. These lucky ones typically do not face serious impediments to employment or health until their mid-70s or even later. By contrast, many poorly educated earners confront obstacles of early disability, limited job opportunities, and unemployment before they reach age 65.

America’s system for managing retirement is badly out of step with these realities. Enacted in the 1930s, Social Security reflects a time when most workers were men who held steady jobs until retirement at 65 and remained married for life. The program promised a dignified old age for rich and poor alike, but today that egalitarian promise is failing. Anne L. Alstott makes the case for a progressive program that would permit all Americans to retire between 62 and 76 but would provide more generous early retirement benefits for workers with low wages or physically demanding jobs. She also proposes a more equitable version of the outdated spousal benefit and a new phased retirement option to permit workers to transition out of the workforce gradually.

A New Deal for Old Age offers a pragmatic and principled agenda for renewing America’s most successful and popular social welfare program.

[more]

front cover of The Political Economy of Tax Reform
The Political Economy of Tax Reform
Edited by Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger
University of Chicago Press, 1992
The rapid emergence of East Asia as an important geopolitical-economic entity has been one of the most visible and striking changes in the international economy in recent years. With that emergence has come an increased need for understanding the problems of interdependence. As a step toward meeting this need, the National Bureau of Economic Research joined with the Korea Development Institute to sponsor this volume, which focuses on the complexities of tax reform in a global economy.

Experts from Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Japan, and Thailand, as well as the United States, Canada, and Israel examine the major tax programs of the 1980s and their domestic and international economic effects. The analyses reveal similarities between the United States and countries in East Asia in political constraints on policy making, and taken together they show how growing interdependence interacts with domestic economic and political concerns to affect issues as politically vital as tax reform. Economists, policymakers, and members of the business community will benefit from these studies.
[more]

front cover of The Politics of Fiscal Privilege in Provence, 1530s-1830s
The Politics of Fiscal Privilege in Provence, 1530s-1830s
Rafe Blaufarb
Catholic University of America Press, 2012
Rafe Blaufarb examines the interwoven problems of taxation and social privilege in this treatment of the contention over fiscal privilege between the seigneurial nobility and the tax-payers of Provence
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Public Policies and Household Saving
Edited by James M. Poterba
University of Chicago Press, 1994
The declining U.S. national saving rate has prompted economists and policymakers to ask, should the federal government encourage household saving, and if so, through which policies? In order to better understand saving programs, this volume provides a systematic and detailed description of saving policies in the G-7 industrialized nations: the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

Each of the seven chapters focuses on one country and addresses a core set of topics: types of accumulated household savings and debt; tax policies toward capital income; saving in the form of public and private pensions, including Social Security and similar programs; saving programs that receive special tax treatment; and saving through insurance.

This detailed summary of the saving incentives of the G-7 nations will be an invaluable reference for policymakers and academics interested in personal saving behavior.
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Reforming Public Welfare
A Critique of the Negative Income Tax Experiment
Peter H. Rossi
Russell Sage Foundation, 1976
Shows what happens when a specific social policy is tried out on an experimental basis prior to being enacted into law. By providing a trial of a variety of negative income tax plans carried out over a three-year period in four communities, the New Jersey-Pennsylvania Income Maintenance Experiment was designed to observe whether income maintenance would lead to reduced work effort on the part of those who received subsidies. This book evaluates the final project reportso n the experiment issued by Mathematica, Inc. and the Institute for Reasearch on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin. A Publication in the Continuities in Evaluation Research Series.
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Shifting the Burden
The Struggle over Growth and Corporate Taxation
Cathie J. Martin
University of Chicago Press, 1991
Since World War II, the corporate tax burden has, overall, decreased enormously as a percentage of the government's total revenue. Until now, however, no explanation of this phenomenon has accounted for the periodic reforms—such as the dramatic 1986 Tax Reform Act—which significantly increase some corporate taxes.

Remarkably accessible and rich in historical evidence, Shifting the Burden is the most compelling explanation to date of how our nation's tax policy is formulated. Cathie J. Martin shows how presidents' cultivation of allies within the business community and struggles within that community itself combine to shape tax policy.
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The Single-Whip Method of Taxation in China
Fang-chung Liang
Harvard University Press

front cover of Social Security Policy in a Changing Environment
Social Security Policy in a Changing Environment
Edited by Jeffrey R. Brown, Jeffrey B. Liebman, and David A. Wise
University of Chicago Press, 2009
Social Security Policy in a Changing Environment analyzes the changing economic and demographic environment in which social insurance programs that benefit elderly households will operate.  It also explores how these ongoing trends will affect future beneficiaries, under both the current social security program and potential reform options.    In this volume, an esteemed group of economists probes the challenge posed to Social Security by an aging population.  The researchers examine trends in private sector retirement saving and health care costs, as well as the uncertain nature of future demographic, economic, and social trends—including marriage and divorce rates and female participation in the labor force. Recognizing the ambiguity of the environment in which the Social Security system must operate and evolve, this landmark book explores factors that policymakers must consider in designing policies that are resilient enough to survive in an economically and demographically uncertain society.
 
 
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front cover of Sorcery and Sovereignty
Sorcery and Sovereignty
Taxation, Power, and Rebellion in South Africa, 1880–1963
Sean Redding
Ohio University Press, 2006

Rebellions broke out in many areas of South Africa shortly after the institution of white rule in the late nineteenth century and continued into the next century. However, distrust of the colonial regime reached a new peak in the mid-twentieth century, when revolts erupted across a wide area of rural South Africa. All these uprisings were rooted in grievances over taxes. Rebels frequently invoked supernatural powers for assistance and accused government officials of using witchcraft to enrich themselves and to harm ordinary people.

As Sean Redding observes in Sorcery and Sovereignty, beliefs in witchcraft and supernatural powers were part of the political rhetoric; the system of taxation—with all its prescribed interactions between ruler and ruled—was intimately connected to these supernatural beliefs.

In this fascinating study, Redding examines how black South Africans’ beliefs in supernatural powers, along with both economic and social change in the rural areas, resulted in specific rebellions and how gender relations in black South African rural families changed. Sorcery and Sovereignty explores the intersection of taxation, political attitudes, and supernatural beliefs among black South Africans, shedding light on some of the most significant issues in the history of colonized Africa.

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Starving the Beast
Ronald Reagan and the Tax Cut Revolution
Monica Prasad
Russell Sage Foundation, 2018
Since the Reagan Revolution of the early 1980s, Republicans have consistently championed tax cuts for individuals and businesses, regardless of whether the economy is booming or in recession or whether the federal budget is in surplus or deficit. In Starving the Beast, sociologist Monica Prasad uncovers the origins of the GOP’s relentless focus on tax cuts and shows how this is a uniquely American phenomenon.

Drawing on never-before seen archival documents, Prasad traces the history of the 1981 tax cut—the famous “supply side” tax cut, which became the cornerstone for the next several decades of Republican domestic economic policy. She demonstrates that the main impetus behind this tax cut was not business group pressure, racial animus, or a belief that tax cuts would pay for themselves. 

Rather, the tax cut emerged because in America--unlike in the rest of the advanced industrial world—progressive policies are not embedded within a larger political economy that is favorable to business.  Since the end of World War II, many European nations have combined strong social protections with policies to stimulate economic growth such as lower taxes on capital and less regulation on businesses than in the United State.  Meanwhile, the United States emerged from World War II with high taxes on capital and some of the strongest regulations on business in the advanced industrial world.  This adversarial political economy could not survive the economic crisis of the 1970s.

Starving the Beast suggests that taking inspiration from the European model of progressive policies embedded in market-promoting political economy could serve to build an American economy that works better for all.
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State Taxation Policy and Economic Growth
Michael Barker, ed.
Duke University Press, 1983
This volume discusses the problems of state governments in coping with contemporary issues of redesigning taxation policies to encourage economic growth.
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Studies in International Taxation
Edited by Alberto Giovannini, R. Glenn Hubbard, and Joel Slemrod
University of Chicago Press, 1993
As a united global economy evolves, economists and policymakers are forced to consider whether the current system of taxing income is inconsistent with the trend toward liberalized world financial flows and increased international competition. To help assess existing tax policies and incentives, this volume presents new research on how taxes affect the investment and financing decisions of multinationals today.

The contributors examine the effects of taxation on decisions about international financial management, business investment, and international income shifting. They consider the influence of tax rules on dividend policy decisions within multinationals; the extent to which tax incentives affect the level and location of research and development across countries; and the fact that foreign-controlled companies operating in the United States pay lower taxes than do domestically controlled companies.

The contributors to this volume are Rosanne Altshuler, Alan J. Auerbach, Neil Bruce, Timothy Goodspeed, Roger H. Gordon, Harry Grubert, Bronwyn H. Hall, David Harris, Kevin Hassett, James R. Hines Jr., Roy D. Hogg, Joosung Jun, Jeffrey K. Mackie-Mason, Jack M. Mintz, Randall Morck, John Mutti, T. Scott Newlon, James M. Poterba, Joel Slemrod, Deborah Swenson, G. Peter Wilson, and Bernard Yeung.
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Tax Discrimination
Michael Knoll and Ruth Mason
Harvard University Press

front cover of Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 22
Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 22
Edited by James M. Poterba
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2008
Tax Policy and the Economy publishes current academic research findings on taxation and government spending that have both immediate bearing on policy debates and longer-term interest. Volume 22 includes issues related to savings through tax-deferred retirement programs, consumer choice on high-deductible health plans, financial aid applications and the tax filing process, and recent developments in corporate income tax reform in the European Union and possible implications for the United States.
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front cover of Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 23
Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 23
Edited by James M. Poterba
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2009

Tax Policy and the Economy publishes current academic research findings on taxation and government spending that have both immediate bearing on policy debates and longer-term interest. The articles in Volume 23 address a range of topics, including Social Security, understanding corporate tax losses, the influence of globalization on the design of a tax system, and the question of whether federal provision of goods and services crowds out their provision by lower levels of government or the private sector.

[more]

front cover of Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 27
Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 27
Edited by Jeffrey R. Brown
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2013
Taxation policy was a central part of the policy debates over the “fiscal cliff.” Given the importance of fiscal issues, it is vital for rigorous empirical research to inform the policy dialogue.  In keeping with the NBER’s tradition of carrying out rigorous but policy-relevant research, Volume 27 of Tax Policy and the Economy offers insights on a number of key tax policy questions.  This year's volume features six papers by leading scholars who examine the tax treatment of tuition at private K-12 schools, the potential streamlining of the federal rules for post-secondary financial aid and the use of tax return information in this process, the effect of tax and benefit programs on incentives to work, the macroeconomic effects of fiscal adjustments, and the set of factors that contributed to the weakening US fiscal outlook in the last decade.
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front cover of Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 31
Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 31
Edited by Robert A. Moffitt
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2017
The papers in Tax Policy and the Economy Volume 31 are all directly related to important and often long-standing issues, often including how transfer programs affect tax rates and behavior. In the first paper, Alan Auerbach, Laurence Kotlikoff, Darryl Koehler, and Manni Yu take a lifetime perspective on the marginal tax rates facing older individuals and families arising from a comprehensive set of sources. In the second, Gizem Kosar and Robert A. Moffitt provide new estimates of the cumulative marginal tax rates facing low-income families over the period 1997-2007. In the third paper, Emmanuel Saez presents evidence on the elasticity of taxable income with respect to tax rates, drawing on data from the 2013 federal income tax reform.  In the fourth, Conor Clarke and Wojciech Kopczuk survey the treatment of business income taxation in the United States since the 1950s, providing new data on how business income and its taxation have evolved over time.  In the fifth paper, Louis Kaplow argues that the reduction in statutory tax rates from base-broadening may not reduce effective marginal tax rates on households. 
 
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front cover of Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 33
Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 33
Edited by Robert A. Moffitt
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2019
This volume presents five new studies on taxation and government transfer programs.  Alexander Blocker, Laurence Kotlikoff, Stephen Ross, and Sergio Villar Vallenas show how asset pricing can be used to value implicit fiscal debts, which are currently rarely measured or adjusted for risk, while accounting for risk properties.  They apply their methodology to study Social Security.  Michelle Hanson, Jeffrey Hoopes, and Joel Slemrod examine the effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on corporation behavior and on firms’ statements about their behavior.  They focus on for four outcomes: bonuses, investment, share repurchases, and dividends. Scott Baker, Lorenz Kueng, Leslie McGranahan, and Brian Melzer explore whether “unconventional” fiscal policy in the form of pre-announced consumption tax changes can shift durables purchases intertemporally, how it such shifts are affected by consumer credit.  Alan Auerbach discusses “tax equivalences,” disparate sets of policies that have the same economic effects, and also illustrates when these equivalences break down.  Jeffrey Liebman and Daniel Ramsey use data from NBER’s TAXSIM model to investigate the equity implications of a switch from joint to independent taxation that could occur in conjunction with adoption of return-free tax filing.
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front cover of Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 34
Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 34
Edited by Robert A. Moffitt
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2020
This volume presents five new studies on current topics in taxation and government spending.  Mark Shepard, Katherine Baicker, and Jonathan Skinner explore implementation aspects of a Medicare-for-All program, which provides a uniform health insurance benefit to everyone, and contrast it with a program providing a basic benefit that can be supplemented voluntarily. John Beshears, James Choi, Mark Iwry, David John, David Laibson, and Brigitte Madrian examine the design and feasibility of firm-sponsored “rainy day funds,” short-term savings accounts for employees that can be used when faced with temporary periods of high expenditure. Robert Barro and Brian Wheaton investigate the impact of taxation on choice of corporate form, on the formation and legal structure of new businesses, and indirectly on productivity in the economy. Jonathan Meer and Benjamin Priday examine the impact of the 2017 federal income tax reform, which reduced marginal tax rates and the incentive for charitable giving, on such giving. Finally, Casey Mulligan analyzes the impact of the Affordable Care Act on whether firms employ fewer than 50 employees, the employment threshold below which they are exempt from the requirement to provide health insurance to their employees.
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front cover of Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 35
Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 35
Edited by Robert A. Moffitt
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2021
This volume presents six new studies on current topics in taxation and government spending. The first study looks at the costs of income tax filing, which have risen over time because of the numerous tax forms families have to fill out when filing their taxes and because of increased costs of itemizing deductions, and explores ways to simplify filing and reduce those costs. The second study investigates the design of income tax schedules when there is uncertainty about the way taxation affects household behavior. The third study provides new and comprehensive estimates of the impact of the US Earned Income Tax Credit on the employment of low-income men and women, finding that the large majority of the various expansions of that credit over the last forty years have increased employment of single mothers. The fourth study reviews the structure of business taxation in China and describes a number of tax distortions and potential inefficiencies in the system. The next paper considers how the Affordable Care Act has affected the health insurance and labor market choices of individuals who are between the ages of 60 and 64, and it finds increases in insurance coverage and reductions in employment for some groups. The last study considers how reimbursement rates for health care providers under various government insurance programs affect providers’ willingness to take on new patients and expand their patient capacity.
 
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front cover of Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 36
Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 36
Edited by Robert A. Moffitt
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2022
This volume presents five new studies on current topics in taxation and government spending.  
Natasha Sarin, Lawrence Summers, Owen Zidar, and Eric Zwick study how investors respond to taxes on capital gains, whether their incentives to invest are affected by those taxes, and whether that responsiveness has changed over time. Ethan Rouen, Suresh Nallareddy, and Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato revisit the question of whether cuts to corporate taxes increase income inequality, bringing new data and new statistical techniques to generate fresh findings. Alan Auerbach and William Gale investigate whether the advantages and disadvantages of different types of taxation are affected when interest rates stay low for long periods, as has been the case in the U.S. for many years. Nora Gordon and Sarah Reber study the distributional impact of emergency subsidies to schools made by the federal government during the recent COVID pandemic and whether those subsidies were sufficient to cover the increased school costs induced by the pandemic. Jacob Goldin, Elaine Maag, and Katherine Michelmore investigate the fiscal cost of an expansion of the U.S. child tax credit, which has been discussed extensively in policy circles recently. They take into account not only the direct expenditure on the allowance but how cost is affected by the existence of work incentives and by possible beneficial effects on childrens’ adult earnings.
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front cover of Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 37
Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 37
Edited by Robert A. Moffitt
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2023
Timely and authoritative research on the latest issues in tax policy.

Tax Policy and the Economy publishes current academic research on taxation and government spending with both immediate bearing on policy debates and longer-term interest.

This volume of Tax Policy and the Economy presents new research on important issues concerning US taxation and transfers. First, Edward L. Glaeser, Caitlin S. Gorback, and James M. Poterba examine the distribution of burdens associated with taxes on transportation. Replacing the gasoline tax with a vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) tax would increase the burden on higher-income households, who drive more fuel-efficient cars and are more likely to own electric vehicles. User charges for airports, subways, and commuter rail are progressive, while the burden of bus fees is larger for lower-income households than for their higher-income counterparts. Next, Katarzyna Bilicka, Michael Devereux, and Irem Güçeri investigate tax shifting by multinational companies (MNCs) and the implications of a potential Global Minimum Tax (GMT). They find that MNCs shift intellectual property to tax havens, and that a large share of patenting activity takes place in tax havens where little or no R&D occurs. Tax havens are particularly important for MNCs with large subsidiary networks; such firms would likely be subject to a GMT. Mark Duggan, Audrey Guo, and Andrew C. Johnston study the role of experience rating in the Unemployment Insurance (UI) system and find that the current structure stabilizes the labor market because it penalizes firms with high rates of UI-eligible layoffs. In the fourth paper, David Altig, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, and Victor Yifan Ye calculate how retiring at different ages will affect Social Security benefit amounts, taking into account taxation and other benefits. They find that virtually all individuals aged 45 to 62 should wait until age 65 or later to maximize their Social Security benefits. Indeed, 90 percent would benefit from waiting until age 70, but only 10 percent do so. Finally, Jonathan Meer and Joshua Witter examine the potential impact of the Earned Income Tax Credit on the labor force decisions of childless adults who are eligible for a small credit after they reach age 25. Comparing labor force attachment changes just before and after this age suggests that the EITC has little impact on the labor force participation of this group.
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Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 38
Edited by Robert A. Moffitt
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2024
Timely and authoritative research on the latest issues in tax policy.

Tax Policy and the Economy publishes current academic research on taxation and government spending with both immediate bearing on policy debates and longer-term interest.

This volume presents new research on taxation and public expenditure programs, with particular focus on how they affect economic behavior. John Guyton, Kara Leibel, Dayanand Manoli, Ankur Patel, Mark Payne, and Brenda Schafer study the disallowance of Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) benefits as a result of IRS audits, and find that in post-audit years, audited taxpayers are less likely than similar non-audited taxpayers to claim EITC benefits. Janet Holtzblatt, Swati Joshi, Nora Cahill, and William Gale provide new empirical evidence on racial differences in the income tax penalty, or bonus, associated with a couple being married. Haichao Fan, Yu Liu, Nancy Qian, and Jaya Wen evaluate how computerizing value-added tax transactions in China affected the tax revenue collected from large manufacturing firms. Niels Johannesen, Daniel Reck, Max Risch, Joel Slemrod, John Guyton, and Patrick Langetieg study data on the ownership of foreign bank accounts and other financial accounts as reported on income tax returns. They find that many of these accounts are in tax havens, and they discuss the impact of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act on tax compliance and government revenue. Louis Kaplow integrates charitable giving into an optimal income tax framework, and shows that the externalities associated with such giving are key to determining its optimal tax treatment. Finally, Roger Gordon compares caps or quantity targets on emissions with carbon taxes and points out that which one dominates can be situation-specific and depend on a number of features of the economy.
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Tax Politics in Eastern Europe
Globalization, Regional Integration, and the Democratic Compromise
Hilary Appel
University of Michigan Press, 2011

“This is the first book to systematically examine the variation in policies of Eastern European countries. There is a theoretical contribution to understandings of variation in tax policies, but just as impressive is the in-depth empirical analysis and in particular the data from interviews with key players in the process.”
—Yoshiko Herrera, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Post-Communist tax reform, like institutional reform in other areas of the post-Communist transition, holds tremendous material consequences for different groups in society. Consequently, one would expect the allocation of resources and the distribution of the financial burden of that allocation to be highly sensitive to domestic politics. Indeed the political stakes should be especially high since post-Communist tax reform requires not merely a simple adjustment at the margin, but the fundamental reallocation of the responsibility for government revenue. In Eastern Europe, however, important areas of tax policy do not reflect traditional domestic variables (e.g., interest groups and partisanship) so much as the international imperatives associated with regional and global economic integration.

In Tax Politics in Eastern Europe, Hilary Appel analyzes the domestic and international factors that drive tax policy. She begins with a review of the greatest challenges in the initial creation of the capitalist tax systems in former Communist states and then turns to the evolution of specific forms of taxation in order to gauge the relative impact of domestic politics on tax policy. Appel concludes that, although some tax areas, such as personal income taxes, remain politicized, most other taxes, such as corporate income taxes and all forms of consumption taxes, have been less subject to domestic political pressures because of powerful constraints resulting from regional and global economic integration.

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Tax Reform in Developing Countries
Malcolm Gillis, ed.
Duke University Press, 1989
This volume presents the work of experts (in most cases the very advisers who designed and helped implement the reforms) on the tax reform efforts of a dozen developing nations—from the restructuring of the economy of postwar Japan to the 1986 reforms in Jamaica. Among the many lessons learned from these efforts are that tax reform is most successful when tax administration is a central (rather than peripheral) focus of reform efforts, and when tax reform is specifically directed toward economic rather than noneconomic objectives.
Other conclusions include the apparently mutually reinforcing nature of tax simplification and tax rate reduction, and the role of indirect tax reforms (such as the value-added tax) in successful reform undertakings.
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Taxation and Development
Lessons from Colombian Experience
Richard M. Bird
Harvard University Press, 1970
Although developing countries have a continuing concern with fiscal problems, studies in development finance take little account of the results of the intensive theoretical and empirical work on economic development done during the 1950s and 1960s, and development economists tend to view the financial side of the development process as secondary. In this study of the structure, role, and effects of taxation in the economic development of Colombia, Richard M. Bird bridges the gap between fiscal experts and development economists. He appraises all aspects of national and local tax systems and proposes that taxation be used as an instrument of development policy.
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Taxation and Economic Development in Taiwan
Glenn P. Jenkins, Chun-Yan Kuo, and Keh-Nan Sun
Harvard University Press, 2003

Documenting the evolution of economic development and fiscal policies in Taiwan over the last four decades, this work explores the effectiveness of specific tax and trade policies. The authors make a major revision to the previously accepted role played by the export processing zones and the protection of domestic producers from foreign competition. The extensive use of duty exemption systems enabled the government to create competition among the exporting firms, and the innovative design of economic policies and administrative systems helped the private sector generate savings, expand investments, and promote exports.

This work analyzes how unique fiscal policies and administrative practices were designed to foster the rapid growth and development of Taiwan during this period.

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Taxation in the Global Economy
Edited by Assaf Razin and Joel Slemrod
University of Chicago Press, 1990
The increasing globalization of economic activity is bringing an awareness of the international consequences of tax policy. The move toward the common European market in 1992 raises the important question of how inefficiencies in the various tax systems—such as self-defeating tax competition among member nations—will be addressed. As barriers to trade and investment tumble, cross-national differences in tax structures may loom larger and create incentives for relocations of capital and labor; and efficient and equitable income tax systems are becoming more difficult to administer and enforce, particularly because of the growing importance of multinational enterprises. What will be the role of tax policy in this more integrated world economy?

Assaf Razin and Joel Slemrod gathered experts from two traditionally distinct specialties, taxation and international economics, to lay the groundwork for understanding these issues, which will require the attention of scholars and policymakers for years to come.

Contributors describe the basic provisions of the U.S. tax code with respect to international transactions, highlighting the changes contained in the U.S. Tax Reform Act of 1986; explore the ways that tax systems influence the decisions of multinationals; examine the effect of taxation on trade patterns and capital flows; and discuss the implications of the opening world economy for the design of optimal international tax policy. The papers will prove valuable not only to scholars and students, but to government economists and international tax lawyers as well.
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The Taxation of Capital Income
Alan J. Auerbach
Harvard University Press, 1983

This important contribution to tax analysis presents seven related theoretical essays that examine the effects of capital income taxation on the behavior of firms. It is divided into three sections, focusing on optimal tax design, firm financial policy, and inflation. Taken together, the essays demonstrate the powerful role taxes play in shaping the behavior of American corporations, and also provide insights into the difficult task of tax reform.

Alan Auerbach’s results suggest policies the government might adopt to promote the optimal accumulation of capital. He examines the implications for capital taxation of discrepancies between nominal depreciation rates and real economic depreciation, and suggests appropriate rules of thumb for determining when capital taxation is neutral among alternative investment projects. He also makes important contributions to the debate over the integration of corporate and personal taxes on capital income and to the behavioral puzzle of why corporations pay dividends to their shareholders.

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The Taxation of Income from Business and Capital in Colombia
Charles E. McLure, Jr., John Mutti, Victor Thuronyi, and George R. Zodrow
Duke University Press, 1990
“Over the years Colombian tax officials have received the benefit of first-class advice of leading foreign scholars. In return, these scholars—and indeed everyone concerned with development policy—have gained a great deal both from the unusual willingness of Colombians to consider new ideas in detail and then, after full public discussion, drawing on the work of these experts to design a ‘made-in-Colombia’ solution.
“[The book’s] most important contribution, however, is undoubtedly with respect to consumption taxes. No one, anywhere, has thought through with such care just how the so-called ‘simplified alternative tax’ (essentially a direct personal consumption tax combined with a cash-flow corporate tax) might work in the real world. Since such taxes are increasingly being considered—if not adopted—all over the world, in developing and developed countries alike, for this reason alone this book should be high on the reading list of all those concerned with the design and implementation of efficient and equitable direct tax systems.”—From the Foreword by Richard M. Bird
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The Taxation of Income from Capital
A Comparative Study of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and West Germany
Mervyn A. King and Don Fullerton
University of Chicago Press, 1984
Taxation—both corporate and personal—has been held responsible for the low investment and productivity growth rates experienced in the West during the last decade. This book, a comparative study of the taxation of income from capital in the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and West Germany, establishes for the first time a common framework for analysis that permits accurate comparison of tax systems.
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Taxes and Capital Formation
Edited by Martin Feldstein
University of Chicago Press, 1987
Economists have long recognized the importance of capital accumulation for productivity and economic growth. The National Bureau of Economic Research is currently engaged in a study of the relationship between such accumulation and taxation policies, with particular focus on saving, risk-taking, and corporate investment in the United States and abroad. The papers presented in Taxes and Capital Formation are accessible, nontechnical summaries of fourteen individual research projects within that study. Complete technical reports on this research are published in a separate volume, The Effects of Taxation on Capital Accumulation, also edited by Martin Feldstein.

By addressing some of the most critical policy issues of the day with a minimum of economic jargon, Taxes and Capital Formation makes the results of Bureau research available to a wide audience of policy officials and staff as well as to members of the business community. The volume should also prove useful for courses in public policy, business, and law. In keeping with Bureau tradition, the papers do not contain policy recommendations; instead, they promote a better understanding of how the economy works and the effects of specific policies on particular aspects of the economy.
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Taxes and People in Israel
Harold C. Wilkenfeld
Harvard University Press, 1973

"In tax administration," writes the author, "all countries can learn from each other." This revealing case study of the development of Israel's tax system--a system which has dealt with the full panoply of problems that tax administrators must face and which is further characterized by heavy taxation--offers a wealth of noteworthy examples for other countries.

Harold C. Wilkenfeld presents a detailed account of the historical and economic realities that forged Israel's elaborate tax structure from the Ottoman period to the present day. He scrutinizes such areas as the crises that Israel's tax administration faced shortly after the State achieved its independence, the problems which had to be solved, the formulation of administrative policy, the interplay of a developing civil service and a developing citizenry. All of these areas are viewed in the context of an evolving economy and a continuing external conflict.

The author presents practical guidelines for countries interested in advancing the effectiveness of tax administration. For instance, many of the Israeli administration's tactics against tax evasion may be transplantable to other nations. Likewise, a number of the technical solutions to administrative problems of both direct and indirect taxes can certainly and readily be adapted to conditions in a number of developing countries.

Taxes and People in Israel comes as a welcome addition to a field which offers few critical, historical studies of the entire tax system of a country. It will be of considerable interest to tax administrators and ought to be read by every new head of a tax administration. It should also prove a valuable source to public administrators, lawyers, sociologists, economists, and anyone concerned with giving fiscal advice to the developing countries.

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Taxing Agricultural Land in Developing Countries
Richard M. Bird
Harvard University Press, 1974
Agriculture is the largest economic sector in most countries of Latin American, Africa, and Asia, and the taxation of agricultural land is a potentially important instrument in the development policies of such nations. But there is a large gap between theory and practice, a gap that needs explaining. In addition, there have been interesting changes in thought on the role of such taxation in development. Richard M. Bird covers all this in a complete rethinking of the whole subject. His book is a distinguished successor to Haskell P. Wald’s classic study, Taxation of Agricultural Land in Underdeveloped Economics, published by Harvard University Press in 1959. With abundant evidence Bird argues that the tax system of each country, in order to be effective as a part of development policy, must be tailored carefully to peculiar circumstances and objectives of that country.
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Taxing Blackness
Free Afromexican Tribute in Bourbon New Spain
Norah L. A. Gharala
University of Alabama Press, 2019
A definitive analysis of the most successful tribute system in the Americas as applied to Afromexicans

During the eighteenth century, hundreds of thousands of free descendants of Africans in Mexico faced a highly specific obligation to the Spanish crown, a tax based on their genealogy and status. This royal tribute symbolized imperial loyalties and social hierarchies. As the number of free people of color soared, this tax became a reliable source of revenue for the crown as well as a signal that colonial officials and ordinary people referenced to define and debate the nature of blackness.

Taxing Blackness: Free Afromexican Tribute in Bourbon New Spain examines the experiences of Afromexicans and this tribute to explore the meanings of race, political loyalty, and legal privileges within the Spanish colonial regime. Norah L. A. Gharala focuses on both the mechanisms officials used to define the status of free people of African descent and the responses of free Afromexicans to these categories and strategies. This study spans the eighteenth century and focuses on a single institution to offer readers a closer look at the place of Afromexican individuals in Bourbon New Spain, which was the most profitable and populous colony of the Spanish Atlantic.

As taxable subjects, many Afromexicans were deeply connected to the colonial regime and ongoing debates about how taxpayers should be defined, whether in terms of reputation or physical appearance. Gharala shows the profound ambivalence, and often hostility, that free people of African descent faced as they navigated a regime that simultaneously labeled them sources of tax revenue and dangerous vagabonds. Some free Afromexicans paid tribute to affirm their belonging and community ties. Others contested what they saw as a shameful imposition that could harm their families for generations. The microhistory includes numerous anecdotes from specific cases and people, bringing their history alive, resulting in a wealth of rural and urban, gender, and family insight.
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Taxing Heaven's Storehouse
Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry, 1074-1224
Paul Jakov Smith
Harvard University Press, 1991

Tea growing was a prosperous industry in Sichuan when Wang Anshi's New Policies created a Tea Market Agency to buy up Sichuanese tea and trade it to Tibetan tribesmen for cavalry horses. At first the highly autonomous Agency not only acquired the needed horses but made a profit. After the Jurchen conquest of North China, however, market realities changed and the combined Tea and Horse Agency's once successful policies ruined tea farmers, failed to meet quotas for horses, and ran a deficit. Smith details the workings of Sichuan tea farming and the tea trade, examines the geopolitical factors that forced the Song to buy horses, and graphically describes the difficulties of driving them more than a thousand miles through rugged mountains with only inexperienced conscripts as trail hands.

In this study of fiscal sociology, Smith also explains how the Tea and Horse Agency transformed the Sichuan local elite, which was notorious for its resistance to state power, into imperial civil servants eager to tax their own region. He draws on modern theories of corporate behavior to explain what made the inner workings of the Agency an extraordinary departure for the Chinese civil service; and he demonstrates how the Agency put into practice the most radical New-Policies theories of state economic activism. The Agency made entrepreneurs out of bureaucrats, but ultimately became ruinously tyrannical as the system of state rewards and punishments drove its personnel to actions that crippled key sectors of the economy.

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Taxing Multinational Corporations
Edited by Martin Feldstein, James R. Hines Jr., and R. Glenn Hubbard
University of Chicago Press, 1995
In the increasingly global business environment of the 1990s, policymakers and executives of multinational corporations must make informed decisions based on a sound knowledge of U.S. and foreign tax policy. Written for a nontechnical audience, Taxing Multinational Corporations summarizes the up-to-the-minute research on the structure and effects of tax policies collected in The Effects of Taxation on Multinational Corporations. The book covers such practical issues as the impact of tax law on U.S. competitiveness, the volume and location of research and development spending, the extent of foreign direct investment, and the financial practices of multinational companies.

In ten succinct chapters, the book documents the channels through which tax policy in the United States and abroad affects plant and equipment investments, spending on research and development, the cost of debt and equity finance, and dividend repatriations by United States subsidiaries. It also discusses the impact of U.S. firms' outbound foreign investment on domestic and foreign economies. Especially useful to nonspecialists is an appendix that summarizes current United States rules for taxing international income.
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Taxing Women
Edward J. McCaffery
University of Chicago Press, 1997
Taxing Women comprises both an insightful, critical analysis of the gender biases in current tax laws and a wake-up call for all those concerned with gender justice to pay more attention to the pervasive impact of such laws. Providing real-life examples, Edward McCaffery shows how tax laws are actually written to punish married couples who file jointly. No dual-income household can afford not to read this book before filing their taxes.

"Taxing Women is a must-have primer for any woman who wants to understand how our current tax system affects her family's economic condition. In plain English, McCaffery explains how the tax code stacks the deck against women and why it's in women's economic interest to lead the next great tax rebellion."—Patricia Schroeder

"McCaffery is an expert on the interplay between taxes and social policy. . . . Devastating in his analysis. . . . Intriguing."—Harris Collingwood, Working Women

"A wake-up call regarding the inequalities of an archaic system that actually penalizes women for working."—Publishers Weekly
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Understanding the National Debt
What Every American Needs to Know
Carl Lane
Westholme Publishing
The staggering United States debt has a direct impact on every American, yet few are aware of where the debt came from and how it affects their lives
The United States has a debt problem—we owe more than $18 trillion while our gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in America, is only $17.5 trillion. To pay down the debt, some recommend austerity, cutting federal expenditures. Others suggest increasing taxes, especially on the wealthiest Americans. In Understanding the National Debt: What Every American Needs to Know, economic historian Carl Lane urges that the national debt must be addressed in ways beyond program cuts or tax increase alternatives, but change can only occur when more Americans understand what constitutes our debt and the problems it causes. The gross national debt is composed of two elements: the public debt and “intragovernment holdings.” The public debt consists of bonds, bills, and notes purchased by individuals, banks, insurance companies, hedge and retirement funds, foreign governments, and university endowments. Intragovernment holdings refers to money that the U.S. Treasury borrows from other parts of the government, principally Social Security and Medicare. This accounts for approximately a quarter of the gross national debt, but that is money that we owe to ourselves, not another entity. The more the government borrows, the less is available for private sector investment, creating a “squeeze” effect that inhibits economic growth. The most burdensome problem is the interest due each year on the debt. Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar less for other purposes. Those elements of the federal budget which are termed “discretionary” suffer. The mandatory elements of the budget—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the interest on the debt—must be provided for, but defense and national security, education, energy, infrastructure repair and development, and other needs wind up with less. By understanding the national debt we have an opportunity to address our real debt challenge—its principal and interest.
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Unfiltered
Conflicts over Tobacco Policy and Public Health
Eric Feldman and Ronald Bayer
Harvard University Press, 2004

Tobacco, among the most popular consumer products of the twentieth century, is under attack. Once a behavior that knew no social bounds, cigarette smoking has been transformed into an activity that reflects sharp differences in social status.

Unfiltered tells the story of how anti-smoking advocates, public health professionals, bureaucrats, and tobacco corporations have clashed over smoking regulation. The nations discussed in this book--Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States--restrict tobacco advertising, tax tobacco products, and limit where smoking is permitted. Each is also struggling to shape a tobacco policy that ensures corporate accountability, protects individual liberty, and asserts the state's public health power.

Unfiltered offers a comparative perspective on legal, political, and social conflicts over tobacco control. The book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of how scientific evidence, global health advocacy, individual risk assessments, and governmental interests intersect in the crafting of tobacco policy. It features national case studies and cross-cultural essays by experts in health policy, law, political science, history, and sociology. The lessons in Unfiltered are crucial to all who seek to understand and influence tobacco policy and reduce tobacco-related mortality worldwide.

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Volatile States
Institutions, Policy, and the Performance of American State Economies
W. Mark Crain
University of Michigan Press, 2003
Why do American state economies grow at such vastly different rates and manifest such wide differences in living standards? Volatile States identifies the sources of rising living standards by examining the recent economic and fiscal history of the American states. With new insights about the factors that contribute to state economic success, the book departs from traditional analyses of economic performance in its emphasis on the role of volatility.
Volatile States identifies institutions and policies that are key determinants of economic success and illustrates the considerable promise of a mean-variance criterion for assessing state economic performance. The mean-variance perspective amends applications of growth models that rely on the mobility of productive factors keyed to income levels alone. Simply measuring the level of growth in state economies reveals an incomplete and perhaps distorted picture of performance. Taking the volatility of state economies explicitly into account refines the whole notion of "economic success."
This book is essential reading for economists, political scientists, and policy-makers who routinely confront questions about the consequences of alternative institutional arrangements and economic policy choices.
W. Mark Crain is Professor of Economics and Research Associate, James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy, George Mason University.
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When Rules Change
The Economics of Retroactivity
Daniel Shaviro
University of Chicago Press, 2000
Suppose Congress were to change Social Security just before you retired? Or repeal income tax deductions for homeowners? Or institute a flat tax? Should those changes be retroactive? Or should you retain the gains or accept the losses resulting from the new enactments? What kinds of policies might governments adopt in order to mitigate the transitional effects of changing legal rules?

Daniel Shaviro tackles these tough questions, bringing legal, economic, and political perspectives to bear on a persistent problem not often given serious attention. When Rules Change: An Economic and Political Analysis of Transition Relief and Retroactivity focuses on tax law changes to develop an in-depth understanding of the transitional issues inherent in any substantive rule change and also to advance a set of normative policy guidelines applicable to any such circumstance. Shaviro reframes traditional approaches to the problem of retroactivity and offers new insights into both the theory and policy of legislative transitions.
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Who Benefits from the Nonprofit Sector?
Edited by Charles T. Clotfelter
University of Chicago Press, 1992
This accessible study examines all the major elements of the nonprofit sector of the economy of the United States —health services, educational and research institutions, religious organizations, social services, arts and cultural organizations, and foundations—describing the institutions and their functions, and then exploring how their benefits are distributed across various economic classes. The book's findings indicate that while few institutions serve primarily the poor, there is no evidence of a gross distribution of benefits upward toward the more affluent. The analysis of this data makes for a book with profound implications for future social and tax policy.
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