For many emerging and developing economies, it is exceedingly difficult to constrain residents from evading tax liability on income from capital, whether earned domestically or abroad. Meanwhile, an international regime for combatting offshore tax evasion is emerging, and the form of the new regime will be established during a narrow window of opportunity over the next few years. If a uniform, multilateral automatic information exchange system is established, it would improve emerging countries’ ability to tax the offshore accounts of their residents and, perhaps more importantly, their capacity to collect information about and tax domestic-source income from capital. However, a fragmented automatic information exchange regime likely would not benefit countries outside the developed economies. Interestingly, the concerns of emerging and developing economies regarding the contours of the new international regime substantially align with the concerns of multinational financial institutions. As a result, these emerging countries may find that multinational financial institutions can be improbable allies in the battle over taxing offshore accounts. With international financial law as the model, and the G-20 as an agenda setter, a governance structure for a uniform automatic information exchange regime that could be useful to emerging countries’ tax administrations could materialize. The paper explores the requisite governance structure and concludes by describing steps emerging countries may take in bilateral and multilateral settings to help create that structure.Note: An earlier version of this working paper was entitled 'Emerging Countries and the Taxation of Offshore Accounts' and another was entitled 'Will FATCA Open the Door to Taxing Capital Income in Emerging Countries?'.
{"title":"Taxing Capital Income in Emerging Countries: Will FATCA Open the Door?","authors":"Itai Grinberg","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2256587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2256587","url":null,"abstract":"For many emerging and developing economies, it is exceedingly difficult to constrain residents from evading tax liability on income from capital, whether earned domestically or abroad. Meanwhile, an international regime for combatting offshore tax evasion is emerging, and the form of the new regime will be established during a narrow window of opportunity over the next few years. If a uniform, multilateral automatic information exchange system is established, it would improve emerging countries’ ability to tax the offshore accounts of their residents and, perhaps more importantly, their capacity to collect information about and tax domestic-source income from capital. However, a fragmented automatic information exchange regime likely would not benefit countries outside the developed economies. Interestingly, the concerns of emerging and developing economies regarding the contours of the new international regime substantially align with the concerns of multinational financial institutions. As a result, these emerging countries may find that multinational financial institutions can be improbable allies in the battle over taxing offshore accounts. With international financial law as the model, and the G-20 as an agenda setter, a governance structure for a uniform automatic information exchange regime that could be useful to emerging countries’ tax administrations could materialize. The paper explores the requisite governance structure and concludes by describing steps emerging countries may take in bilateral and multilateral settings to help create that structure.Note: An earlier version of this working paper was entitled 'Emerging Countries and the Taxation of Offshore Accounts' and another was entitled 'Will FATCA Open the Door to Taxing Capital Income in Emerging Countries?'.","PeriodicalId":221633,"journal":{"name":"Georgetown University: Public Law (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134254951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Illinois has the largest unfunded public pension liabilities of any state in the nation. This article considers whether the Illinois General Assembly may, without violating Article XIII, Section 5 of the 1970 Illinois Constitution, unilaterally cut the pension benefits of current public employees as a means to reduce the $96.8 billion the State owes to its five public pension systems. Article XIII, Section 5 (i.e., the "Pension Clause") of the Illinois Constitution provides that: "Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired." This article concludes that legislation enacted to unilaterally reduce the pension benefits of current employees would violate the Pension Clause based on the Clause’s text and origins, constitutional convention debates revealing the framers’ intent, contemporaneous news articles demonstrating voters’ understanding of the Clause, and a host of court decisions construing the Clause. Indeed, at the time of the 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention ("Convention"), the State pension systems were no better funded than they are today. This circumstance, coupled with the fact that the legislature already had a poor track record of making its actuarially-required pension contributions, caused public employee groups to lobby Convention delegates to include the Pension Clause. These groups reasoned that constitutional protection was necessary because the General Assembly would renege on its pension obligations to public servants during a financial crisis. Convention delegates agreed and included the Clause to foreclose that result. The article finds that the Pension Clause not only makes a public employee’s participation in a pension system an enforceable contractual relationship, but also constitutionally protects the pension benefit rights contained in the Illinois Pension Code when an employee joins a pension system, including employee contribution rates. The Clause also safeguards pension benefit enhancements that are later added during employment. Further, the Clause ensures that pensions will be paid even if a pension system defaults or is on the verge of default. Finally, while the Clause bars the General Assembly from adversely changing the benefit rights of current employees via unilateral action, these rights are "contractual" in nature and may be modified through contractual principles. In sum, while welching on public pension promises is not an option for Illinois as some legal and civic commentators have suggested, legitimate contract principles provide a solution to mitigate this crisis.
{"title":"Is Welching on Public Pension Promises an Option for Illinois? An Analysis of Article XIII, Section 5 of the Illinois Constitution","authors":"Eric Madiar","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1774163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1774163","url":null,"abstract":"Illinois has the largest unfunded public pension liabilities of any state in the nation. This article considers whether the Illinois General Assembly may, without violating Article XIII, Section 5 of the 1970 Illinois Constitution, unilaterally cut the pension benefits of current public employees as a means to reduce the $96.8 billion the State owes to its five public pension systems. Article XIII, Section 5 (i.e., the \"Pension Clause\") of the Illinois Constitution provides that: \"Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.\" This article concludes that legislation enacted to unilaterally reduce the pension benefits of current employees would violate the Pension Clause based on the Clause’s text and origins, constitutional convention debates revealing the framers’ intent, contemporaneous news articles demonstrating voters’ understanding of the Clause, and a host of court decisions construing the Clause. Indeed, at the time of the 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention (\"Convention\"), the State pension systems were no better funded than they are today. This circumstance, coupled with the fact that the legislature already had a poor track record of making its actuarially-required pension contributions, caused public employee groups to lobby Convention delegates to include the Pension Clause. These groups reasoned that constitutional protection was necessary because the General Assembly would renege on its pension obligations to public servants during a financial crisis. Convention delegates agreed and included the Clause to foreclose that result. The article finds that the Pension Clause not only makes a public employee’s participation in a pension system an enforceable contractual relationship, but also constitutionally protects the pension benefit rights contained in the Illinois Pension Code when an employee joins a pension system, including employee contribution rates. The Clause also safeguards pension benefit enhancements that are later added during employment. Further, the Clause ensures that pensions will be paid even if a pension system defaults or is on the verge of default. Finally, while the Clause bars the General Assembly from adversely changing the benefit rights of current employees via unilateral action, these rights are \"contractual\" in nature and may be modified through contractual principles. In sum, while welching on public pension promises is not an option for Illinois as some legal and civic commentators have suggested, legitimate contract principles provide a solution to mitigate this crisis.","PeriodicalId":221633,"journal":{"name":"Georgetown University: Public Law (Topic)","volume":"75 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115947174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Legal scholars have become keenly interested in behavioral approaches to law that recognize that real people do not always behave in a rationally selfish fashion. For example, numerous recent papers examine how human choice can be distorted by endowment effects, anchoring effects, availability biases, and other cognitive deficiencies. There is a curious imbalance to this "behavioral law and economics" literature, however. Contemporary critiques of the rational selfishness model of human behavior tend to focus far more on the first modifier - the assumption of rationality - than on second - the assumption of self interest. This essay reverses that emphasis. It argues that the human tendency to act in an other-regarding fashion (to sacrifice in order to help or harm others) is far more pervasive, powerful, and important than generally recognized. In support of this claim, it reviews the extensive empirical evidence that has been accumulated over the past four decades on human behavior in social dilemma games, ultimatum games, and dictator games. This evidence establishes that in the right circumstances, experimental subjects routinely behave as if they care about costs and benefits to others. (In the parlance of economics, their behavior "reveals" other-regarding preferences.) Moreover, subjects' decisions to act in an other-regarding fashion seem driven primarily not by their own payoffs but by social context - their perceptions of what others believe, what others expect, and how others are likely to behave. These findings are important not only to our understanding of individual behavior, but also to our understanding of a wide variety of social institutions. To illustrate, this essay considers how the reality of socially-contingent, other-regarding behavior may offer insight into the nature and workings of social norms. In particular, it considers how the phenomenon of other-regarding preferences sheds light on a variety of questions that have been debated in the norms literature. These include the questions of what sorts of behaviors are most likely to solidify into norms; why people follow norms; and how policymakers and other "norm entrepreneurs" can best use norms to change behavior.
{"title":"Other-Regarding Preferences and Social Norms","authors":"Lynn A. Stout","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.265902","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.265902","url":null,"abstract":"Legal scholars have become keenly interested in behavioral approaches to law that recognize that real people do not always behave in a rationally selfish fashion. For example, numerous recent papers examine how human choice can be distorted by endowment effects, anchoring effects, availability biases, and other cognitive deficiencies. There is a curious imbalance to this \"behavioral law and economics\" literature, however. Contemporary critiques of the rational selfishness model of human behavior tend to focus far more on the first modifier - the assumption of rationality - than on second - the assumption of self interest. This essay reverses that emphasis. It argues that the human tendency to act in an other-regarding fashion (to sacrifice in order to help or harm others) is far more pervasive, powerful, and important than generally recognized. In support of this claim, it reviews the extensive empirical evidence that has been accumulated over the past four decades on human behavior in social dilemma games, ultimatum games, and dictator games. This evidence establishes that in the right circumstances, experimental subjects routinely behave as if they care about costs and benefits to others. (In the parlance of economics, their behavior \"reveals\" other-regarding preferences.) Moreover, subjects' decisions to act in an other-regarding fashion seem driven primarily not by their own payoffs but by social context - their perceptions of what others believe, what others expect, and how others are likely to behave. These findings are important not only to our understanding of individual behavior, but also to our understanding of a wide variety of social institutions. To illustrate, this essay considers how the reality of socially-contingent, other-regarding behavior may offer insight into the nature and workings of social norms. In particular, it considers how the phenomenon of other-regarding preferences sheds light on a variety of questions that have been debated in the norms literature. These include the questions of what sorts of behaviors are most likely to solidify into norms; why people follow norms; and how policymakers and other \"norm entrepreneurs\" can best use norms to change behavior.","PeriodicalId":221633,"journal":{"name":"Georgetown University: Public Law (Topic)","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115604732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper I examine whether shared equity limitations that are sometimes applied to subsidized affordable housing creates for the owners of such housing a second class ownership status. I conclude that they do not. In support of this conclusion, I look at the meaning of property from both cultural and historical perspectives. I argue that property and ownership are culturally constructed concepts that are understood differently in different cultures and in the same culture over time. I examine the series of limitations that have been placed on property in industrial societies and argue that the limitation on equity is just another in a long list of limitations that society has imposed on ownership in favor of a supervening social good, in this case, the preservation of affordable housing for future generations of low-income homeowners.
{"title":"Shared Equity Housing: Cultural Understanding and the Meaning of Ownership","authors":"Michael R. Diamond","doi":"10.4324/9781315553740-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315553740-3","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper I examine whether shared equity limitations that are sometimes applied to subsidized affordable housing creates for the owners of such housing a second class ownership status. I conclude that they do not. In support of this conclusion, I look at the meaning of property from both cultural and historical perspectives. I argue that property and ownership are culturally constructed concepts that are understood differently in different cultures and in the same culture over time. I examine the series of limitations that have been placed on property in industrial societies and argue that the limitation on equity is just another in a long list of limitations that society has imposed on ownership in favor of a supervening social good, in this case, the preservation of affordable housing for future generations of low-income homeowners.","PeriodicalId":221633,"journal":{"name":"Georgetown University: Public Law (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130599145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：