An Alternative Tale of Two Tax Jurisdictions: A Comment

ABSTRACT In a recent issue of this journal, Galles and Sexton (1998) evaluated California's Proposition 13 and Massachusetts' Proposition 2-1/2. Galles and Sexton (1998, p. 123) conclude that
Both initially succeeded. However, following a brief lag… governments made up lost revenues primarily through increased non-tax fees and charges; within a decade, real per capita revenues and expenditures exceeded their pre-revolt peaks.
The present Note offers an alternative view of Propositions 13 and 2-1/2 which, using data from Galles and Sexton (1998, Tables 1, 2), concludes that these Propositions not only yielded short-term success for several years in terms of reduced real per capita revenues and expenditures but also may have yielded longer-term success in terms of reducing the growth rate of real per capita revenues and expenditures. This Note also raises questions about the way in which Galles and Sexton (1998) performed their computations.     

An Alternative Tale of Two Tax Jurisdictions

ABSTRACT Cebula (1999) suggests that the success of California's Proposition 13 and Massachusetts'Proposition 2-1/2 is better judged by their effects on the growth rates of real per capita revenues and expenditures rather than on the levels of those variables, which Galles and Sexton (1998) used to evaluate those measures. However, the data shows that virtually all of their effects, relative to the United States as a whole, arose during their implementation periods, and that there is no clear evidence of the "longer term success in terms of reducing the growth rate of real per capita revenues and expenditures" that Cebula cites.     

Charitable Donations and the Estate Tax: A Tale of Two Hypotheses

Regression studies have suggested that reducing estate‐tax rates would lead to a net reduction in total charitable donations distributed at death. Not only is this notion counterintuitive, our empirical analysis yields the contrary conclusion: overall donations would increase. In rationalizing this donation‐decline outcome, investigators have pointed to the tax deductibility of donations in assessing estate‐tax liability. These efforts, we show, are dubious. The view that donations will decline is also shown to be inconsistent with axioms of generally accepted economic theory. Two distinct sets of indifference curves that imply these two antithetical views are suggested, their observable predictions derived and compared to the relevant evidence, showing that the increasing‐donation hypothesis is confirmed, offering overall a clear challenge to the decline‐in‐donation position. Our empirical results suggest that most estate‐tax payers possess indifference curves consistent with those that embody the increasing‐donation hypothesis.     

On the Degree of Property Tax Assessment Inequity in Complex Tax Jurisdictions

A bstract . The extent of interest in the degree of inequity in property assessment is indicative of the importance of identifying determinants of assessment inequity. Previous attempts to identify such determinants were certainly incomplete. An additional variable is offered for the list that would be expected to explain statistically the degree of inequity in the distribution of property tax liabilities , in general, and to examine specifically the relationship between assessment, inequity and the degree of complexity for assessing Jurisdictions. The latter are often complex in the sense that individual properties, although subject to a set of two or more nominal tax rates on assessed values, are not subject to the same set of nominal tax rates. It is argued—to the extent that individual property tax liabilities are capitalized in sale prices for individual properties —that the greater the number of specific property tax rates on assessed value , the greater is the expected frequency of change in such specific property tax rates and, therefore, the higher the expected value of the measure of the degree of inequity.     

The Role of Debt Purchases in Takeovers: A Tale of Two Retailers

In this paper, we examine acquisitions of two financially distressed retailers—Federated's takeover of Macy's, and Zell Chilmark's takeover of Carter Hawley Hale. In both cases the raider purchased some of the target's outstanding debt to launch its takeover attempt. These debt purchases appear to have been facilitated by two salient factors—the raider's expertise in dealing with distressed firm restructuring and the ability of the raider to acquire a large blockholding of debt. Our analysis indicates that, when these factors are present, it is optimal for a raider to initiate a takeover of a distressed firm through purchasing a block of the firm's debt. Target bondholder reaction will be favorable whereas shareholder reaction may be either favorable or unfavorable.     

雪后双城记

《中国企业家》记者前往郴州和贵阳,为读者带来中小企业在这两个受灾最严重的城市的消息当一个商业记者去往雪灾劫后的城市,固然和一个普通的外来客一样直接见闻了当地老百姓和企业对停水停电日子的恐惧和不可忍受,但更特别的感受是,雪灾暴露了中小企业所赖以生存的商业环境的脆弱。     

中国应为下一个人口转折点未雨绸缪吗?

在老龄化这个长期人口变化趋势中，中国将先后经历两个有重要意义的转折点。第一个转折点以劳动年龄人口进入负增长为标志，通常会降低经济潜在增长率，从供给侧对经济增长造成冲击；第二个转折点是以总人口进入负增长为标志，通常具有抑制经济增长需求因素的效应，会妨碍潜在增长率的实现。一些国家的经验表明，转入人口负增长会因总需求减弱使一个国家经济增长表现不佳，甚至在转变之际出现严重衰退，增长速度经常处在潜在增长能力之下。中国已迈过第一个转折点，潜在增长率已经逐年下降，并即将迎来第二个转折点，如何实现自身潜在增长率成为现实的挑战。面对未富先老国情，中国须特别警惕下一个人口转折点造成的冲击。立足于进一步深化改革和扩大开放，未雨绸缪地进行一系列政策调整，形成双循环发展格局，是应对这个转折点冲击的根本之策。     

Keeping Two Sets of Books: The Relationship Between Tax and Incentive Transfer Prices

Multinational enterprises use two types of transfer prices: the tax transfer price to achieve optimal tax outcomes and the incentive transfer price to provide appropriate incentives to offshore managers. The two optimal transfer prices are independent if taxable income is assessed using the formula apportionment approach. Under the separate entity approach, however, they are interdependent: they both decrease as the penalty for noncompliance with the arm's length principle increases; and the tax transfer price decreases and the incentive transfer price increases as the marginal cost of production increases. We also examine the case where the incentive transfer price is negotiated rather than dictated by the parent. The results are robust to different market structures and tax environments.     

Deprivation and Incidence of Urban Public Services: A Tale of Three Cities

We approach the problem of deprivation and incidence of urban public services by quantifying the extent of deprivation of different income groups in relation to both desired and minimum levels. Three types of deprivation are clearly established. First, deprivation in both Bombay and Calcutta is higher than that of Delhi. Second, there is a serious concern for primary health and education because it is established that the lack of these local services is the major source of deprivation among urban settlers. Finally, we report how well different income classes are served in these cities: the rich are worst-off in Calcutta and best-off in Bombay. Middle income and poor citizens are best-off and worst-off in Delhi and Bombay, respectively.     

Eliminating Housing Tax Preferences: A Distributional Analysis

We examine the distributional impact of potential changes in the tax treatment of owner-occupied housing in this paper. In particular, we focus on the removal of mortgage interest and local property tax deductibility. A theoretical model of the demand for housing is developed that captures the impact of removing these deductions on housing demand. Then, we use a large cross section of individual income tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service for 1990 to estimate the distributional effects of removing housing deductions. Taxpayers are ranked by income and tax liability, both with and without the housing deductions. By comparing tax liability under the alternative regimes, and composing measures of the distributional impact of removing housing tax deductions using the classic Suits index, we assess both revenue neutral and nonrevenue neutral distributional effects. Results in both cases indicate that the removal of the tax deductibility of mortgage interest and property taxes would increase the progressivity of the income tax substantially.     

Governed Through Ghost Jurisdictions: Municipal Law,Inner Suburbs and Rooming Houses

This article examines the legal geography of municipal bylaws regulating rooming houses in the City of Toronto. Using a legal geography analysis of Toronto's rooming house licensing bylaw, I argue that this bylaw is a ghost jurisdiction that designates part of the city as illegal and has implications for governance of the inner suburbs. In so doing, I push the debate on legal geography forward by suggesting that we, as urban scholars, take the temporal seriously in our analysis of space. Drawing from semi‐structured interviews, archival data and participant observation, I analyse seemingly mundane legal mechanisms through the case study of suburban rooming houses. Overall, in this article I make three contributions. First, I demonstrate how a temporal analysis is important to legal geography inquiries of uneven regulation and spaces of poverty. Second, I suggest that studies of legal governance are integral for redefining suburban governance amidst socio‐economic decline in the inner suburbs. Third, I argue that studying urban legal mechanisms in the suburbs is essential for moving beyond downtown analytical frameworks and is needed to address how low‐income suburban tenants, a large majority of whom are racialized newcomers, are unevenly regulated and unfairly governed by local government.     

A Cautionary Tale About Control Variables in IV Estimation

Many instrumental variable (IV) regressions include control variables to justify (conditional) independence of the instrument and the potential outcomes. The plausibility of conditional IV independence crucially depends on the timing when the control variables are determined. This paper works through different IV models and discusses the (conditions for the) satisfaction of conditional IV independence depending on whether the control variables are measured prior to or after instrument assignment. To illustrate the identification issues, we consider the Vietnam War draft risk as instrument either for veteran status or education to evaluate the effects of these variables on labour market and health outcomes. Our empirical analysis based on the ‘Young Men in High School and Beyond’ survey suggests that commonly used conditional IV strategies to estimate the impact of draft induced military service or education may be severely biased due to the use of improper controls.     

A Tale of Passion: Linking Job Passion and Cognitive Engagement to Employee Work Performance

We propose a model of job passion that links two types of passion, harmonious and obsessive passion, to employees' work performance, via the mediating mechanism of cognitive engagement (comprising attention and absorption). Results from a survey conducted with 509 employees from an insurance firm indicate that employees with harmonious passion performed better at work, and that this relationship was mediated primarily by cognitive absorption, that is, the intensity of focus and immersion experienced by the employees when working. However, even though obsessive passion was negatively related to cognitive attention (i.e. the amount of cognitive resources spent thinking about work), it did not have a significant relationship to work performance overall. We identify and discuss research and practical implications for job passion and performance management.     

Charities and Tax: A Plea to the Chancellor

How can charitable giving be encouraged? Michael Brophy, of the Charities Aid Foundation, makes an appeal to the Chancellor for increasing the tax advantages of charitable gifts.     

A Tale of Three Discourses: The Dominant,the Strategic and the Marginalized*

abstract This study drew from a structurational view of discourse and employed a discourse analysis approach based on rhetoric and hermeneutics to analyse the organizational discourses operating in the UK operations of a global human resources consulting firm, People Associates. The aims were firstly to understand in what sense we can speak of ‘modes of discourse’ in organizational settings; secondly to explore the potential existence and nature of interrelations among different modes of discourse; and thirdly to explore the constructive potential of modes of discourse on their social and organizational contexts. The results suggest that modes of discourse can usefully be seen as rhetorical enthymemes constituted of relatively stable, normative structures and flexible, action‐oriented structures; that modes of discourse can interrelate through their deeper structural features, and can have mutually co‐optive or antagonistic relationships; and lastly that the constructive potential of discourse is based primarily on its deeper structures, and on the consonance of surface communicative actions with these structures. This research thus sheds light on fundamental definitional and substantive issues in organizational discourse; in particular offering a novel conceptualization of the nature of discourse, a further understanding of discursive interrelations, and finally one way to understand its constructive effects on social organizations.     

A Research on Consciousness of Tax Payers About Environmental Tax in Erzurum

As environmental pollution increases, measures taken cannot follow increasing issues causing environmental pollution. Thus, important items required for human life such as air, water, and soil are polluted rapidly and threatened human health. Humanity produce and consume various goods and services in order to meet current requirements as well as pollute the environment required for maintaining life and source for these activities. Environmental taxes are adopted as one of the precautions for avoiding pollution of necessary components to sustain human life. This study aims to determine the sensitivities of 597 tax payers to environmental taxes, who contribute to environmental direct or indirect regulations with income, motor vehicle, special consumption, and sanitation taxes. The findings of the questionnaire suggest that corresponding taxpayers in Erzurum are sensitive to environmental taxes and that they tend to adopt any environmental tax being performed while this tax is intended to protect the environment.