Evading Tax Evasion

Income tax evasion.

in jail serving time for income tax evasion.

The Corporate Tax Conundrum

Corporate and income tax

Persistent and more widespread tax evasion also helped increase this delay.

It can be achieved both through an improvement in tax collection and a reduction in tax evasion.

What Corporate Tax for Europe?

Given its global nature, tax evasion must be dealt with in the context of strengthening international cooperation in tax matters.

Tax evasion and illegal export of capital are the two most common practices constituting capital flight.

Could it focus, for example, on contributing to the objective of minimizing and eliminating tax evasion?

The difficulty of including tax evasion as a predicate offence for money laundering illustrates this problem.

This book is going to give us one of the biggest tax evasion cases since Capone!

Tax evasion is usually confronted in two ways audits and harsh sanctions. But, as the rising tide of tax evasion suggests, these mechanisms amount only to a cat game of and mouse problem and the mice, it seems, are winning.

In view of these developments, Governments have become more concerned about tax evasion in the international context and the resulting loss of government tax revenues.

Instead of cutting proven tax incentives for business investment, the US should offset at least some of the revenue losses from a lower corporate tax rate by raising tax rates on corporate shareholders. Most countries that reduced their corporate tax rates have followed this path, while the US has done the opposite.

Transparency was crucial and none of the CARICOM member States was on the list of Non Cooperative Countries and Territories (NCCTs) of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) or considered a haven for corporate tax evasion and laundering of terrorist assets.

Other States may resort to laws prohibiting tax evasion, given that this illegal income is neither declared nor taxed.

These revenue losses could be offset by curtailing so called corporate tax expenditures deductions, credits, and other special tax provisions that subsidize some economic activities while penalizing others and broadening the corporate tax base. Both President Barack Obama s plan for business tax reform and the Simpson Bowles deficit reduction plan propose reducing such expenditures to pay for a reduction in the corporate tax rate.

In 1999, when Laar became Prime Minister again, he abolished the tax on corporate profit, which was harming entrepreneurship. As a consequence of the ensuing tax competition, corporate tax rates have fallen to 15 25 in most European countries.

Perhaps the most promising reform is corporate tax reduction, which will help Japan boost both foreign and domestic investment. By spurring increased business activity, it will actually increase Japan s corporate tax revenue.

However, the rise of international road services has brought new problems, notably accelerated road damage, traffic accidents, pollution and tax evasion.

Governments should also work to improve tax compliance and reduce evasion, which requires limiting tax officials discretionary authority. Computerizing tax administration, for example, could help to limit corruption by making it more difficult to tamper with records.

In recognition of this special status, cooperatives are exempted from paying corporate tax.

For example, tax evasion is pervasive, so increases disproportionately hit those who already pay, fueling a widespread perception of unfairness. Monti attempted to address this, but moving from the current equilibrium to a better one, in which tax evasion is the exception rather than the norm, is a long term project.

Bearing this situation in mind, the Government has been focusing its efforts on tax evasion control through a broad cross indexing plan aimed at improving the analytical capacity of the Tax Department.

The US now has the highest corporate tax rate of these countries. Even after incorporating various deductions, credits, and other tax reducing provisions, the effective average and marginal corporate tax rates in the US what corporations actually pay are higher than the OECD average.

That had been accomplished by widening the tax base, improving administration efficiency, reducing corporate income tax, introducing a personal income tax of 10 per cent and keeping value added tax at 10 per cent.

A 15 tax would raise 300 billion. The choice of tax rate would be part of the negotiation over how far to reduce the overall US corporate tax rate.

None of the major petroleum and rice importers paid corporate tax for the current year.

At the same time, the effective corporate tax rate in Japan is higher than it is elsewhere, making it difficult for Japan to attract investment, foreign or domestic. In order to survive international tax competition and thus be able to rely on corporate taxes as a source of revenue Japan s corporate tax rate should be lowered in the long run.

But he is also proposing a significant cut in the corporate tax rate. To many, this approach seems inconsistent Shouldn t the corporate tax rate be raised, not lowered, so that corporations contribute their fair share to deficit reduction?

Finally, Abe s government must reduce the corporate tax rate to align it more closely with international standards. Amid increasingly intense international competition to attract foreign investment, reducing the corporate tax would actually increase Japan s tax revenues, by spurring companies to invest their vast cash stockpiles in more productive activities.

The system is complex, expensive to administer, and can result in double taxation because members usually do not allow full write offs for losses and tax liabilities incurred abroad. It is also prone to tax evasion, owing to different definitions of corporate income in the member states and the vast opportunities for cheating offered by ALP (since reference market prices often do not exist), not to mention profit shifting to low tax jurisdictions.

This information is analysed by a special group within the State Tax Committee and, if indications are found of transformation into cash, tax evasion and unusual banking transactions, there is additional monitoring of their activities.

Corporate tax reform also offers a good opportunity for bipartisan agreement, especially given that Obama and congressional leaders of both parties have expressed interest. While gains from fundamental tax reform say, replacing the current tax system with a broad based consumption tax are large, on the order of 0.5 1 percentage point per year of economic growth for a decade, corporate tax reform would also boost growth.

Indeed, cutting these items to pay for a reduction in the corporate tax rate could end up increasing the tax on corporate economic activity in the US. Eliminating accelerated depreciation for equipment would raise the effective tax rate on new investments repealing the domestic production deduction would increase the effective tax rate on US manufacturing and rescinding the R D tax credit would reduce investment in innovation.

A lower rate would strengthen incentives for investment and job creation in the US, and weaken incentives for tax avoidance. It would also reduce numerous efficiency reducing distortions in the US tax code, including substantial tax advantages for debt financing over equity financing and for non corporate businesses over corporate businesses.

Instead, developing country leaders must draw on the experiences of both developed countries and their peers to design tax policies that meet the basic requirements of operability, buoyancy, and stability. This can include broadening the tax base, reducing tax avoidance and evasion, improving tax collection, and developing new, cooperative international taxation strategies.

First, it has increased the scope for tax evasion, owing to a rapid proliferation of tax havens around the world. Multinational companies have many more opportunities than before to dodge their fair and efficient share of taxation.

Now that's an evasion.

Indeed, cutting these items to pay for a reduction in the corporate tax rate could end up increasing the tax on corporate economic activity in the US. Eliminating accelerated depreciation for equipment would raise the effective tax rate on new investments repealing the domestic production deduction would increase the effective tax rate on US manufacturing and rescinding the R amp D tax credit would reduce investment in innovation.

Among fiscal incentives, developed countries appear to prefer accelerated depreciation and specific deductions for corporate income tax purposes.

But a rate cut would be costly in terms of foregone revenues each percentage point would reduce corporate tax revenues by about 100 billion over the next decade. Moreover, recent studies indicate that a significant share of the corporate tax burden falls on capital, so a reduction in corporate taxes would weaken the progressivity of the tax system at a time when income inequality is at an all time high.

Eliminating special interest loopholes, like tax breaks for oil and gas, or for corporate jets, would not yield enough revenue to pay for a meaningful rate cut. And curtailing accelerated depreciation, the manufacturing production deduction, and the R amp D tax credit which account for about 80 of corporate tax expenditures would involve significant tradeoffs.