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Legislative procedures that expose tax expenditure proposals to scrutiny outside the taxation committees can improve a state legislature’s ability to control its tax base. These procedures -- fiscal notes, special subcommittees, joint taxation and spending committees, and bill size C move decisions away from the exclusive control of committees whose interests may be more narrow than the interests of the legislature as a whole. Strong legislative procedures do not, and should not, eliminate the passage of new tax exemptions, but it is desirable to enact only exemptions that match major policy objectives. Several factors, including an important economic special interest, a tax rate increase, or a major shift in intergovernmental fiscal relations, can boost an exemption past even the strongest procedures. Procedures appear to be most effective in limiting exemptions with a relatively small fiscal effect.

This paper aims to analyse how constitutional law and corporate income tax (CIT) law, in the Iberian Peninsula, addresses the tax justice principle of generality. Also, it has as an intention to understand the dimension of tax exemptions predicted in the CIT law of both countries.

It analyses several data sources from Spain and Portugal, between them constitutions laws, CIT laws, general tax laws and some constitutional court cases. Furthermore, it uses the content analysis method to identify the level of exemptions and tax benefits present in the CIT law.

The results show that constitutional laws reserve a section to regulate tax issues, that it can present major or minor development. The Spanish article 31 explains the tax system and the Portuguese articles of 103 and 104 explain not only the tax system but also gives instructions about how must occur income, property and consumption taxation. Both jurisdictions, do not refer expressly to the generality principle, nevertheless, it has an implicit presence in the Supreme law and the same happen in the CIT law. They predict that all legal entities, public and private ones, have to contribute to financing the public expenditure. Furthermore, the respect to generality principle implies that tax income exemptions have to be justified, otherwise it can configure a break of the researched fundamental. In researched cases, the Spanish CIT have present more tax exemptions than Portugal, which can lead to consider a relation between the level of corporate contribution to income tax revenues collection and the tax exemptions predicted in the CIT law.

It allows understanding the difference between tax jurisdictions in the tax principles domain.

The purpose of this paper is to test the theory of optimal monitoring, which posits that more generous county homestead exemptions lower the incentive for residents to monitor school operations, thereby increasing inefficiency in service outcomes.

This research uses two-stage Simar and Wilson’s data envelopment analysis to assess county school districts’ efficiency in the state of Georgia for each year from 2007 to 2012.

Controlling for other factors known to be correlated with government efficiency, such as fiscal capacity and competition, this study finds evidence that higher property tax burdens resulting from lower county school district homestead exemptions, as a proxy of more intense citizens’ monitoring pressures, are associated with improved county school district performance efficiency. These results provide empirical support for the theory of optimal monitoring.

Increased government funding toward education is more likely to improve education outcomes if accompanied by efficiency control mechanisms. One such mechanism could be increased transparency of government operations and accountability of public officials.

This research uses a newer and more robust estimation of relative efficiency and analyzes a more common type of property tax exemption. This improves the internal validity and generalizability of the findings regarding the theory of optimal monitoring.

In Portugal, between 1989 and 2010, capital gains from corporate shares were exempted, while gains from other instruments, like limited liability companies (LLC) equity stakes, were taxed. Inevitably, this non-neutral tax treatment originated a notorious tax arbitrage, consisting in the transformation of the legal status of a LLC into a corporation, the subsequent share sale and tax exemption. In tax litigation, many arbitration rulings were delivered, with widely divergent decisions. The purpose of this paper, using a blend of the legal research method and case analysis, is to discuss three research questions. Should the general anti-abuse clause (GAAC) be applied to this tax planning operation? Why the divergence in arbitration rulings? Is this anomalous arbitration outcome because of the wording the GAAC and its complexity or, contrarily, does it emerge from the disconnection between the set of rules governing capital gains taxation and the legislative intent that is behind such rules?

The methodology used in this paper is based on a mix of the legal research method and case analysis. In the case of legal research, a hermeneutic approach – meaning that documents, texts and their interpretation can produce important fruits to the development of the field – is a tested and fruitful approach. Besides being a hermeneutic discipline, it is an argumentative one. By exposing arguments that confirm or deny particular solutions, legal research (e.g. in criminal, business or administrative law) can influence better legislative choices by political actors. Advantages of case analysis include lessons learned from observation. The author discusses if the application of the GAAC to an arrangement that originated a tax exemption can be validated by the usual interpretative lines that doctrine sustains should be observed when a GAAC is used to void legal schemes. The pros and cons of tax arbitration are also highlighted.

The conclusion of this paper is that the GAAC is not the crux of the problem. Instead, a contradictory or, at least, disconnected relation between the expressed intent of legislators and the wording of capital gains tax clauses is, in our view, the main reason for such divergent arbitration rulings on the same issue.

The author believes that the paper is a contribution to the literature, given the global use of anti-abuse clauses and the interpretative complexities they originate. Moreover, the analysis in this paper is carried out in a legal setting where a disconnection is detectable between the expressed legislative intent and the legal drafting of personal income tax rules related to the exemption of capital gains. Studying the complexity added by this feature of the Portuguese legislation serves as a reminder of the importance of careful and well-crafted wording to achieve consistent court outcomes.

The paper has value to governments, tax authorities and tax managers, given the ever-increasing use of anti-abuse clauses in many countries, and the potential use of arbitration in similar settings.

The main argument of this paper is that the accounting profession in Canada exercises hegemonic leadership over the development of tax education in terms of cadence and direction of reforms. To support this argument, the paper uses the development of the microeconomic approach to teaching taxation and the correlation between the numbers of tax courses taught in undergraduate programs and exemptions provided by the provincial institutes of the Canadian Chartered Accountants to students joining them. It uses arguments from institutional isomorphism to elucidate expected resistance to adopting new developments, such as the microeconomic approach, in the accounting field. The paper also builds on Gramsci’s theory of hegemony to imply that business schools have given their consent to the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants by closely linking their curriculum, at least the taxation courses, to that of the institute.

Acknowledging that housing forms a large part of households’ and country’s long-term wealth, the South African Government has implemented various housing-related policies towards that end. Among these, the government has extended transfer duty exemption to house buyers – both individuals or natural persons and companies or other parties – to enable them buy houses of their choices since January 1950 to date. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between historical transfer duty exemption and housing demand in the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) over a longer period, where a comprehensive data set on house sales and other predictors was available.

This paper uses multi-year data on repeat house sales from 2010 to 2020 and other macro- and socio-economic variables to test the relationship between transfer duty exemption and housing demand in the CoJ, a core part of Gauteng province, South Africa. After cleaning the original data, final analysis was based on 139,121 repeat sales transactions. Data was analyzed in R.

Findings suggest that, when macro-, socio-economic and yearly effects are controlled, transfer duty has a damping effect on housing demand in the CoJ. The results were consistent across all the estimated models. While the motivation behind the implementation of transfer duty exemption in South Africa continues to encourage home ownership, these findings are unexpected because they do not offer support to that policy intention. These unexpected results are partly explained by the prevailing complexities of the housing market and related policies and the progressive tax regime. However, there are welfare effects that all buyers achieve across the housing market ecosystem.

This paper extends work on housing markets research in South Africa through the investigation of mortgage-based housing market in the CoJ that presents one of the densest, developed, bustling and growing housing market in the country. It also presents a fertile ground where all the effects of all the housing policies coalesce – in the statistical sense, one can control the effect of some aspects of housing policies, while appropriately testing the link between a specific policy (in this case, transfer duty exemption) and housing dynamics.

Numerous policies are established in Mauritius to attract foreign direct investment, but at the same time, severe concerns were raised concerning the erosion of Mauritian tax base, which is witnessed by the decrease in the percentage of tax revenue to gross domestic product in recent years. To avoid these issues, in 2019, the Mauritian legislator has domesticated the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) BEPS 2013 Action 3 on controlled foreign company (CFC) in its income tax legislation. As such, the purpose of this study is to critically assess the implications of CFC rules of Mauritius to reduce tax avoidance in the light of international tax competition.

To achieve the research objective, this study will adopt a black letter approach by analysing the rules and regulations of various jurisdiction as well as international standards on CFCs and other tax avoidance legal provisions. A comparative analysis will be conducted between Mauritian laws on CFCs and the corresponding legislation of the UK and the USA, which are selected to assess the developed world’s position on strict CFC rules.

A hasty implementation of CFC rules leads to various complexities like interpretation issues and diminishing the competitiveness of the country to multinationals. In this respect, there is the risk of a trade-off between tax collected and foreign direct investment in the country. Consequently, the research recommends that Mauritius reforms its CFC legislation by extending the scope of tax exemptions for intra-group financing income, for the first year of CFC’s operation with the possibility of offsetting foreign taxes and for the Mauritius Revenue Authority to establish detailed guidelines on the determination of CFC income and its attribution for tax purposes in Mauritius.

Existing literature has to a great extent focused on the role of CFC rules as a tax avoidance measure and on the divergence or convergence between domestic CFC legislation against the OECD recommendations (Dourado, 2015; Xu, 2018; Beebeejaun et al., 2023). However, limited literature is available on the evaluation of the purpose of CFC rules enacted by a developing country being Mauritius in the context of the global competitive market, to which this research aims at filling the gap.

Argues the case for reform of US tax codes from a feminist viewpoint. “The household” and “the individual” are falsely distinguished in the tradition of taxing only adult male breadwinners ‐women being engulfed in “the household”. Describes recent analysis of human identity in terms of separation and connection. Suggests tax structure be based on persons‐in‐relation: an individual earner plus his or her dependants.

This study aims to evaluate the property tax base under the local government property taxation in Nairobi City and its implication on revenue adequacy of the city. Nairobi has grown both in population and in physical extent resulting to increased demand for urban services. The city faces challenges of adequate infrastructure service provision against increasing demand. Property taxation if fully exploited can be a major source of city government revenue, which has been dwindling.

Literature review of property tax bases in the world and examination of best practices was done to highlight the inadequacies of property tax base administration in Nairobi. Primary data were gathered through interviews of officers in Nairobi City involved in the land rating process. Secondary data were obtained through documentary search and field survey of the study area.

The study established that Nairobi relies on a dual system of taxation, namely, site value rating and area rating. Tax is on vacant land only and excludes improvements. There are many legal exemptions and administrative exclusions from the tax base. The property tax registers do not include all the taxable properties and there is no regular updating of the tax registers. Nairobi relies on an outdated valuation roll whose values have no relation to the current market values.

These factors have resulted to a narrow tax base, which affects the revenue potential of the city and its ability to adequately provide infrastructure services.

This is an original research, which relied mainly on primary data. To establish the property tax bases and the exempt properties in Nairobi, the researchers interviewed the officers at the Nairobi city land valuation and property management directorate using structured questionnaires. To address the third objective on whether the property tax base is complete and all-inclusive, the research relied on primary data. The research population was residential properties in Buruburu, Kilimani and Riruta areas of Nairobi city. The sample data on property details were collected from the Ministry of Land and Physical Planning (MLPP). The researchers then examined the records at the Nairobi City to evaluate whether the properties, which are registered at the MLPP, are charged land rates at the city level and at what amounts. This included properties under site value rating and area rating.

The purpose of this paper is, first, to discuss if the Portuguese corporate tax reform, implemented in 2014, moved the system towards international trends. Second is to analyse in what areas the similarities and disparities are more pronounced when assessing the Portuguese reform against the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base, the Mirrlees Review or other relevant international guidelines. Finally, it assesses how a European country under a bailout could significantly reform the corporate tax.

The methodology employed is based on a mix of the legal research method and case study analysis. The legal method will be applied under comparative income taxation, and the case study will draw on the Portuguese reform to broaden the discussion about critical issues like the participation exemption regime and its place in the taxation of international income flows. The paper will analyse core issues in international income taxation, the present state of corporate tax harmonization in the European Union, discuss the main issues that were dealt by the Portuguese tax reform and offer a critical assessment of tax policy choices that underpinned the reform.

During the past decades, Portugal was increasingly out of line with international trends in corporate taxation. The bailout asked for the Portuguese Government in 2011 placed a heavy burden in public finances, with an apparent lack of room to follow international trends of corporate tax reform. However, it can be concluded that, after convincing the troika that investment and growth were paramount to overcome the severe economic and social crisis that fell upon the country, the corporate tax was seen as an important policy tool to promote these goals. The reform was thus possible even in the context of a restrictive public finance situation, and followed most guidelines put forward in highly regarded international reports.

A broad corporate tax reform, including rate reduction, a participation exemption regime, a more flexible rule on cost acceptance, an extension of loss carry over period, to name a few, was possible in a very constrained public finance situation. By placing the emphasis on moving the system towards international trends and promoting measures to enhance investment and growth, international creditors could accept such a reform. Also, a consensus with the main opposition party was a very important factor in securing much needed political support.

The findings from what can be considered as an experiment in corporate tax reform in tough economic and social times can be useful to policymakers, tax authorities and international bodies dealing with tax reform processes. The impact on managerial decisions such as investment and financing is also relevant.