This paper explores the economic consequences of (taxing) power fragmentation using both theory and data. We first formalize tax policy as the result of interministerial competition where the Minister of Finance ('Guardian') and the Minister of Mines ('Spender') have distinct objective...

Tax expenditures are tax relief measures targeted at some socially desirable activities or specific groups of taxpayers. This paper reviews issues related to tax expenditures in the EU and presents some stylised facts related to tax expenditures in personal income taxation (PIT), value-added...

This paper aims to test the hypothesis of the existence of significant tax competition between communes, which mainly concerns the share of value-added tax (VAT) proceeds, by exploring the system for allocating intergovernmental transfers in Morocco and analyzing the determinants of VAT...

The aim of this paper is to provide a legal documentation that is conducted under a thorough review of tax legislation and create a dataset, consisting of 120 laws that brought significant changes in the vast majority of categories of taxes in Greece from 1974 to 2018. It is noteworthy that a...

This volume contains the papers presented at the conference "Reich, Recht und Schulden," which took place on September 12, 2025, at the House of Finance of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. The papers address various aspects of the financial history of the Holy Roman Empire between 1648 and...

In this paper, we attempt to estimate the tax revenues to be gained by the Member States of ATAF, WATAF, AU and the South Centre under the Amount A and an alternative stylized DST taxation regime. Our research demonstrates that the comparative revenue effects of the Amount A and DST taxation...

This paper quantifies the dynamic macroeconomic effects of tax changes in Germany, allowing for anticipation effects of preannounced tax reforms. Identification is achieved using a narrative approach, which provides information about the timing of tax reforms. An anticipated cut in taxes has a...

Taxation of cross-border services has been identified as a high priority issue in the United Nations (UN) negotiations to establish a new global framework for tax. This paper analyses the defects of international tax rules as applied to services, and their exploitation by multinational...

Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis, this paper updates, for 123 countries, the estimates of tax capacity-defined as the maximum level of revenue a country can feasibly achieve - and tax effort - measured as the ratio of actual tax revenue to tax capacity. It also introduces two novel models that...

This paper analyses how UK tax-benefit policies shaped poverty, inequality, and living standards between 2019 and 2023, spanning the COVID-19 shock and the subsequent cost-of-living crisis. Using the UKMOD tax-benefit microsimulation model combined with imputed household consumption data, we...

This paper assesses the fiscal and distributional effects of personal income tax expenditures in Portugal using EUROMOD and 2022 EU-SILC microdata. We compare the 2023 tax-benefit system with a counterfactual scenario in which tax expenditures are removed to estimate first-round impacts. We find...

The taxing authority of subnational governments is limited by the geographic location of individuals and economic activity. The rise of telework decouples a worker's residence from the employer's location, creating challenges for personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, and unemployment...

This paper critically reviews the empirical and structural literature on the effects of income taxation on informal economic activity. Although labor taxation has been widely studied in relation to labor market outcomes, evidence linking income taxes to informality remains fragmented and uneven...

Since its inception, the Welsh Government has had powers over local taxation - determining the structure of council tax (with councils then setting the headline tax rate) and the structure and level of business rates. The late 2010s saw the Welsh Government gain powers over a number of other...

This paper explores the economic consequences of (taxing) power fragmentation using both theory and data. We first formalize tax policy as the result of interministerial competition where the Minister of Finance ('Guardian') and the Minister of Mines ('Spender') have distinct objective...

The taxing authority of subnational governments is limited by the geographic location of individuals and economic activity. The rise of telework decouples a worker's residence from the employer's location, creating challenges for personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, and unemployment...

We study the fiscal consequences of large military buildups. To do so, we assemble the Global Budget Database, a comprehensive dataset of disaggregated central government finances for 20 countries from 1870 to 2022. We identify 114 episodes of military spending booms, in peace and war, and...

This paper explores the forms of taxation practised by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State branches operating in Mali and Niger. It builds on insights from the rebel governance literature and an original conceptualisation of jihadist taxation and its effects. Unlike classic perspectives in the rebel...

Market forces, and notably the role of trade openness, contribute to shaping inequality in South Africa and may limit the inclusiveness of its growth path. Recently, policy reforms may have helped to mitigate these effects. To better understand these developments, we analyse trends in post-tax...

This paper argues that Colombia's taxation problems reflect a deeper political economy equilibrium shaped by extractive institutions, extreme inequality, and cultural norms that favor individual solutions over collective ones. Historical legacies produced a weak and often distrusted state, which...

Market forces, and notably the role of trade openness, contribute to shaping inequality in South Africa and may limit the inclusiveness of its growth path. Recently, policy reforms may have helped to mitigate these effects. To better understand these developments, we analyze trends in post-tax...

The Scottish Budget and Spending Review published on 13 January set detailed spending plans for 2026-27, alongside higher-level plans for the following two years for day-to-day (resource) spending and the following three years for investment (capital) spending. Understandably, the Scottish...

This paper explores the role of informal taxation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and aims to shed light on informal fiscal realities and the implications of informal tax institutions for governance and state legitimacy. Relying on mixed-methods data from household surveys, interviews, and...

An influential literature suggests that the rise of taxation should come with a 'governance dividend': the quality of government should improve, because the taxpaying citizenry will subject the ruler to increased scrutiny. While this fits the history of nowadays advanced economies, it is less...

We find that patents registered by multinational enterprises (MNEs) in tax havens help avoid taxes in the EU but fail to increase the total factor productivity (TFP) of EU-located group members. We conclude that many of those patents' prime purpose is not to make technology available and then...

For over a century now, one of the central debates of economic policy has been around fiscal policy. Taxation and government spending have been a feature of most political campaigns, with one (more vocal) side claiming that taxation chokes economic growth and benefits special interests, while...

This paper investigates the distributional consequences of Dual Income Taxation (DIT), a system that taxes labour income progressively while applying a flat rate to capital income. We make two complementary contributions. First, we classify income tax systems across 20 advanced economies from...

Global tax governance has long struggled with ineffectiveness, as reflected in rising corporate tax avoidance that costs governments hundreds of billions of dollars annually. In response, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)/G20 advanced the most ambitious initiative...

Chapter 1 Introduction -- Chapter 2 A Topography of Tax Knowledge -- Chapter 3 From Citizenship to Belonging -- Chapter 4 Facets of Fiscal Belonging -- Chapter 5 Fiscal Culture -- Chapter 6 Reciprocity Thick and Thin -- Chapter 7 Conclusion .