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Tax amnesty (TA) schemes are typical in developing countries. Governments’ claims and suppositions are continually heightened; however, this may differ in actuality. This study aims to present an overview of the effectiveness of TA schemes and the problems they raise in implementing anti-money laundering regulations.

This study used a qualitative research design. Content analysis was used to analyse research articles, reports, legal documents and news articles.

Every amnesty offered in Pakistan from 1956 to 2018 failed to meet government expectations. Instead, the continuity resulted in an irrepressible black economy. The black economy’s uncontrollability undermines tax collection and hinders a robust anti-money laundering regime. Significantly, tax holidays with discrepant legislation strengthen evaders, plunderers and launderers. These policies severely impede the implementation of anti-money laundering policies in the financial institutions of Pakistan. Additionally, Pakistan's geopolitical location, circumstance and war against terror cannot afford any policy that provides monetary relaxation to offenders.

There is no concrete evidence to support long-term economic progress through the implementation of amnesty schemes as a revenue collection policy. This study evaluates previous studies and findings to understand the effect of tax amnesties on the financial industry of Pakistan. The findings have practical implications for tax collection authorities, policymakers and international financial bodies.

Previous studies have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of Pakistan’s regular tax amnesties. However, this study discusses the implementation of TA schemes concerning anti-money laundering regulations and customer due diligence by financial institutes and provides suggestions to minimise its negative implications.

This paper aims to analyse how the law on income taxation of small businesses in Uganda has evolved from the pre-colonial to the present day.

The study used doctrinal legal research based on existing documentation on empirical research from Ugandan laws, institutional writings, books and journal articles.

The study established that there has been various promulgations and amendment of the law on income taxation of small businesses geared at simplifying the law, expanding the tax base and improving the tax yield from this sector. However, the law still bears limitations, some of which have existed from way back before the current legal regime on presumptive tax. Thus, the income tax yield from small businesses continues to be low over the years. It posits that it is not clear whether small business owners understand the legislations on presumptive income tax to enable us to determine with certainty that further amendments have the potential of enhancing an increased tax yield, which has not been attained over the years.

Limited work has been undertaken on the historical development of the income taxation of small businesses in a developing country like Uganda. This study provides an initial synthesis of the literature on the evolution of income tax laws for small businesses in an economy that had been earlier neglected by scholars.

This study aims to determine how taxes can be used to bridge income inequality gap in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

A panel data set of 36 SSA countries was analysed using generalised method of moments.

The results suggest that an increase in direct taxes relative to indirect taxes has a positive significant impact on income inequality. This is mostly due to the progressive nature of direct taxes as compared to indirect taxes.

This research contributes to the scant literature on how specific tax components affect income inequality, especially in developing countries.

This study aims to examine why tax reforms fail and explores how tax collection can be improved within a developing country context.

Data comprise 28 semi-structured interviews with taxpayers, tax experts and tax authority personnel based in Pakistan. The results are analysed using a combined lens of taxpayer trust and tax agencies’ capabilities.

Tax reforms failed to build taxpayers’ trust and tax agencies’ capabilities. Building trust is challenging and demands extensive ongoing engagement with taxpayers while yielding gradual permanent results. This requires enhancing confidence in government; educating taxpayers; removing complexities; introducing transparency and accountability in tax agencies’ operations and the tax system; promoting procedural and distributive justice; and reversing perceptions of corruption through reconciliation and stakeholder inclusivity. Developing tax agencies’ capabilities requires upgrading outdated technologies, systems and processes; implementing governance and organisational reforms; introducing an oversight board; and recruiting and training skilled professionals.

The findings can assist policymakers and tax collection authorities in understanding why tax reforms fail and identifying potential solutions.

This study contributes to the emerging literature by exploring tax administration failures in developing countries. It contributes to the literature by engaging stakeholders to understand why reforms fail and potential solutions to stimulate tax revenues.

This study aims to evaluate and investigate the existing process of establishing a banking relationship with politically exposed persons.

This study used qualitative techniques of semi-structured interviews with senior compliance officers of financial institutes in Pakistan.

This study found that the existing mechanism of identification and verification of politically exposed persons (PEPs) is ineffective. Financial institutes face challenges like the quality of name screening data sets, cost of identification and verification, role and control of the regulator, the influence of politically exposed persons, the opaqueness of laws and international connections of the politically exposed persons. Further, financial Institutes are burdened by regulators to perform robust PEP customer due diligence but do not guide and provide the right tools.

This paper aims to find challenges faced by financial institutes before onboarding the PEPs. Further, very limited studies on this topic have been conducted in Pakistani context.

This paper aims to understand what green tax measures Portuguese corporate tax law foresees and whether the measures observe the polluter pays tax principle.

The legal research method is applied to achieve the goals. Specifically, the research analyzes the most relevant corporate tax legislation to identify legal provisions influencing taxpayers’ behavior in sustainability decisions, particularly corporate income tax (CIT) and value-added tax (VAT) laws.

The results show that the Portuguese Green Taxation Law introduces several environmentally friendly taxation measures by benefiting or increasing the tax burden. The influence on the CIT law results from instruments such as the autonomous taxation of expenses, depreciation, provisions and the local corporate tax. In the VAT, electric tourism vehicles’ VAT deduction is possible. These measures enforce the polluter pays tax principle, increasing the tax burden on less environmentally friendly options and decreasing the tax burden on more green economic choices. These measures directly influence the companies’ choice because of the increase or decrease tax burden according to more or less polluting choices.

This study only studies the Portugal case.

This study highlights the Portuguese experience reconciling taxation and environmental dimensions.

The essence of finance has become essential in the sustainability discussion in recent times as a result of the capital intensive nature of sustainable projects. This has motivated financial experts and institutions to develop various financial instruments and mechanisms to further advance the course of protecting the environment, and decreasing the release of excess carbon and GreenHouse Gases. This is to also provide the opportunity for funding Green or sustainable infrastructure development. This chapter advances a discourse on matters relating to sustainable financing of infrastructure projects. The fundamentals of sustainable or green funding of infrastructure projects, and sustainable schemes of financing green infrastructure projects are discussed.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between market share and rent levels to understand the supply structure in the Japanese private rental housing market.

The study calculates the municipal-level market share of a dominant rental housing operator in Japan and ascertained the overall market rent and the dominant operator’s rent premium at the municipal level by using a major web portal’s listing data of rental houses.

The study shows that, as market share increased, overall market rent tends to decrease, and analyzed by market share, there is no significant difference between the rent of the dominant operator and the overall market rent.

The results of the study suggest that dominant operators may have lowered the rent of their own property to prioritize filling vacancies, which, in turn, causes the overall level of market rent to decline. This is an outcome of rental housing operators’ strategy to maximize long-term rental income under sublease contracts with individual owners, which ensures stable rental income for owners regardless of the occupation status of the apartments.

Previous research on regional monopolies in mortgage sales and brokerage businesses in the USA implies that rental housing operators in a position of great influence over the market can control and keep the market rents at high levels, that is, at large costs for consumers. The findings of the study are novel in showing the inverse relationship in the Japanese private rental market.