Income Tax Liability Research Articles

Value Implications of REITing and De-REITing

We explore the determinants and value implications of publicly traded real estate companies converting to real estate investment trusts (REITs), which we term REITing, and publicly-traded REITs giving up their REIT status, termed de-REITing. Non-REIT real estate firms that pay relatively high dividends and have high income tax ratios are more likely to convert to a REIT; while REITs that have lower pretax incomes, dividend adjusted operating cash flows, and higher leverage ratios are significantly more likely to de-REIT. REITing generates significant positive abnormal returns (ARs) around the REITing announcement. These positive ARs are concentrated in firms with higher income tax liabilities and firms paying larger dividends pre REIT-conversion. De-REITing announcements generate significant negative ARs, which are mitigated when the de-REITing firm has low potential tax liabilities, or when the firm is cash flow constrained with respect to its dividend payment. Based on these results, we argue that the degree to which REITing (de-REITing) decisions are value generating (destroying) depends on the magnitude of potential tax and dividend implications. We also examine the longer run valuation effects of REITing and de-REITing decisions and find no evidence of a reversion of the short-run announcement effects.

Pobreza y desigualdad en Ecuador: modelo de microsimulación de beneficio fiscal

El objetivo de este artículo es presentar Ecuamod, el modelo de microsimulación de beneficios fiscales para Ecuador. Un modelo de microsimulación estática que combina reglas detalladas de política de país con microdatos representativos de la Encuesta nacional de ingresos y gastos de hogares urbanos y rurales (Enighur 2011-2012) para simular derechos de beneficios en efectivo, impuesto sobre la renta personal y pasivos de cotización a la seguridad social, así como IVA e impuestos especiales para el periodo de 2011 a 2017. Se analiza la importancia relativa de los componentes de los beneficios fiscales en la distribución del ingreso y el efecto de los instrumentos de impuestos sobre la pobreza y la desigualdad de los ingresos.

The Troubling Case of the Unlimited Pass-Through Deduction

Updated 6/29/20. This paper dissects section 2304 of the CARES Act, which temporarily suspends § 461(l), a limitation on deducting certain business tax losses. Enacted by Congress less than three years ago as part of the 2017 Tax Act, § 461(l) prevented individuals from deducting business losses from pass-through entities against more than $500,000 of other ordinary income. The suspension of this provision in the CARES Act, which I refer to as the unlimited pass-through deduction, allows taxpayers with extremely high incomes to deduct tax losses and thus to reduce or even totally zero out their income tax liability, including retroactively. Combining distributional estimates of other provisions of the CARES Act with estimates from the unlimited pass-through deduction, I show that the unlimited pass-through deduction inverts the perceived progressivity of the cash rebates that were the primary individual-focused element of the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. I detail how the deduction operates, including how it interacts with other provisions of the CARES Act and other provisions of the Tax Code, in particular bonus depreciation. I also examine the legislative backstory of how the limitation came to exist as part of the 2017 Tax Act and how it came to be repealed in the CARES Act. The context explored here sheds light on the current political economy of federal tax legislation generally, and in particular on the political economy of hastily enacted tax legislation, which should perhaps be viewed as a regular mode of tax legislating. The high-income beneficiaries of the unlimited pass-through deduction will receive cash rebates in 2020 based on losses they realized long before the COVID-19 crisis hit, as detailed below, and there are no particular indicators that these taxpayers have faced particular challenges due to COVID-19 or are in any current need regardless of the cause. Further, the deduction payouts are not conditioned on taking any future actions or using the funds received in a way that might have positive spillover effects for the broader economy or for populations that are particularly vulnerable to suffer negative economic consequences of COVID-19. Thus, the unlimited pass-through deduction cannot be justified as a targeted response to circumstances created by the spread of COVID-19. And, it is definitively not a minor technical fix that should be accepted as necessary or ignored as inevitable given the circumstances.

Causal-Comparative Macroeconomic Behavioral Study: International Corporate Financial Transfer Pricing in the United States

This research paper summarizes the ideas of maximization of corporate welfare and basic firm theory, transfer prices among corporate subsidiaries have been found to complicate performance evaluations of subsidiaries and the parent company. The research problem addressed the lack of understanding of transfer price policy and its application to impact firm profits within three specific measures: investor return, earnings per share, and effective tax rate. The main purpose of this study was to ascertain an empirical relationship between transfer pricing policies and these financial performance measures within a study of two multinational firms. The research paper presents an empirical result indicated statistically significant differences between the measures for each firm and allowed further comparative analysis based on other collected data. Overall, results indicated each measure of performance affected transfer pricing tax liabilities, and transfer pricing may be a vehicle to improve company profitability. The results of this study may contribute to positive social change by bringing a focus to efficiency in transfer pricing, which could yield positive impacts on the economy through the reduction of international transaction costs stemming from the minimization of tariffs, income tax liabilities at home and abroad, foreign exchange risk and conflicts with foreign governments’ policies. Positive social change may also be affected by providing investors a new perspective on corporate financial data based on transfer price policies and corporate performance. Keywords: Finance, Transfer Pricing, Macroeconomy, Corporate Performance, Effective Tax Rate, Earnings Per Share, Investor Return.

A Constitutional Wealth Tax

Policymakers and scholars are giving serious consideration to a federal wealth tax. Wealth taxation could address the harms from rising economic inequality, promote equality of social and economic opportunity, and raise the revenue needed to fund critical government programs. These reasons for taxing wealth may not matter, however, if a federal wealth tax is unconstitutional. Scholars debate whether a tax on a wealth base (a “traditional wealth tax”) would be a “direct tax” subject to apportionment among the states by population. This Article argues, in contrast, that this possible constitutional restriction on a traditional wealth tax may not matter. If the Court struck down a traditional wealth tax, Congress could instead tax wealth by adjusting a taxpayer’s income tax liability on account of her wealth. This Article describes three general methods for making this adjustment (collectively, “Wealth Integration” methods). A taxpayer’s wealth could affect her taxable income base (the “Base Method”), the applicable rate schedule (the “Rate Method”), or the availability of credits against tax (the “Credit Method”). Wealth Integration methods could replicate the economic effects of a traditional wealth tax but with an intrinsically different constitutional analysis. The Court could strike down Wealth Integration methods only by overruling settled prior precedent, invalidating many current features of the income tax, and fundamentally restricting Congress’s power to tax income under the Sixteenth Amendment. Finally, the possibility that Congress could instead tax wealth through Wealth Integration methods provides a new argument why the Court should uphold a traditional wealth tax. Otherwise, the Court would have to choose between fundamentally restricting the Sixteenth Amendment—and jeopardizing the income tax as we know it—or distinguishing between economically similar taxes on the basis of their formal label while still allowing Congress to tax wealth and diminishing the effect of the apportionment requirement as a restraint on Congress’s taxing power.

Usage of Tax Saving Instruments Among Individual Assesses

Tax planning is one of the key aspects of financial planning from a tax perspective. Efficient tax planning enables every taxpayer to reduce the tax liability to the minimum. This is done by legitimately availing various tax exemptions, deductions under chapter VIA, rebates and allowances available under the Income Tax Act, 1961. The ever increasing functions of the government have naturally lead to increased expenditure, for instance, achieving the social and economic objectives laid down in the constitution, balancing regional economic growth, removing the concentration of economic power in few hands, reducing the inequality of income, and so on. The wealth of an individual is maximized by increasing the level of savings in various investment avenues. The key area of the research is to learn the appropriate popularly used tax saving instruments and also the factors influence the investment in those tax saving instruments. It is empirical research which will throw light upon the aspects of tax planning and ways to reduce the income tax liability.

The Autonomous Taxation of Corporate Expenses in Portugal

Abstract Portuguese corporate income tax has a special feature rarely seen in other countries. Autonomous taxes are levied on an extensive set of corporate expenses, irrespective of corporate profitability. Fiscal revenue from the autonomous taxation of expenses comprises about 12 % of corporate income tax receipts, which illustrates its relevance for the tax authorities and the corporate world. As autonomous tax rules are usually interpreted and applied to certain corporate expenses by chartered accountants (CAs) when computing income tax liabilities and filling in tax returns, the purpose of this paper is to present an empirical study of the perceptions of Portuguese CAs regarding key dimensions of autonomous taxation of expenses (ATE), as these influence corporate tax management. Using a sample of 665 CAs surveyed, and applying factor analysis, the paper concludes that tax complexity, tax compliance and tax planning are the main dimensions of ATE perceived by respondents. Besides the corporate income tax impact on fiscal management, new layers of complexity, planning opportunities and compliance costs are perceived to be added by ATE. Additionally, by applying cluster analysis, the paper finds that sociodemographic characteristics of CAs (e. g. age, gender, professional environment, level of expertise) generate clusters of CAs with different perceptions of the role and consequences of ATE in the management of corporate tax affairs.

Distributional Impacts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Using Farm Household Microdata

AbstractThis paper uses ten years of USDA's Agricultural Resource Management Survey data to evaluate the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). We simulate income tax returns at the household level using the survey's detailed financial and demographic information. We find that farm households in the top 10% of the income distribution realize 71% of the total tax cuts from the TCJA, while families in the bottom 20% of the distribution experience a slight increase in their income tax liabilities. Consequently, the TCJA reduces the progressivity of the tax code, particularly over years with lower farm household income.

Time for the Child Tax Credit to Grow Up: Preserving the Credit’s Availability and Enhancing Benefits for Families

The Child Tax Credit is one of the largest subsidies in the tax code for families with children. The CTC provides a supplementary boost to families by providing cash income when they do not have income tax liability. The CTC has more recently been used as an economic recovery measure and as a work incentive. However, the Credit's own structure undermines its ability to serve these purposes. The Credit should be structured such that it will further the program's key purposes and remain available to more lowincome families. Some beneficial structural changes include permanently setting the refundability threshold at $3,000 and insulating the Credit's provisions from inflation.  J.D. 2011, Columbia Law School; B.A. 2006, Drew University. The author would like to thank Anne Lieberman for her outstanding editorial assistance and the members of the Columbia Journal of Tax Law for their comments and editorial work. 302 COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF TAX LAW [Vol.2:301

Non-Residents and Capital Gains Tax in Australia

The evolution of capital gains taxation in Australia parallels that in Canada in many respects. Federal income taxes were adopted in both countries during the First World War, and in both jurisdictions the courts interpreted the term "income," the subject of taxation, using United Kingdom judicial concepts that excluded capital gains from the tax base. In the last quarter of the 20th century, both countries amended their income tax laws to capture capital gains, and in both countries concessional rates apply. Initially, the Australian capital gains tax regime had rules that paralleled those in Canada in respect of the application of capital gains tax measures to non-residents, and the list of assets that might generate a capital gains tax liability for non-residents was similar in both countries. Australia changed course just over a decade ago with a decision to limit the income tax liability of non-residents in respect of capital gains to gains on land and land-rich companies alone, albeit with an extended definition of land to capture directly related interests such as exploration and mining rights. Consequently, until this decade, reform of Australia's regime imposing capital gains tax on non-residents focused on the concept of source as a primary driver, with the categories of taxable assets being gradually reduced. However, after more than a decade of unprecedented increases in housing prices in Australia, reform has moved away from addressing source to integrity matters. In Australia, as in Canada, there has been considerable investment in property, particularly residential property, by non-residents in recent years, and the government has sought ways to enhance the enforcement and integrity of the capital gains tax rules applying to non-residents disposing of Australian real property. Since 2013, Australia has proposed three separate measures to ensure integrity within this regime: removal of a concessional rate, introduction of a withholding tax, and removal of the principal residence exemption for non-residents. This article considers the history and development of Australia's capital gains tax regime as it applies to non-residents and examines the recent shift in focus from what is captured in the capital gains source rules to integrity provisions adopted to achieve both compliance and geopolitical objectives.

A Constitutional Wealth Tax

Policymakers and scholars are giving serious consideration to a federal wealth tax. Wealth taxation could address the harms from rising economic inequality, promote equality of social and economic opportunity, and raise the revenue needed to fund critical government programs. These reasons for taxing wealth may not matter, however, if a federal wealth tax is unconstitutional. Scholars debate whether a tax on a wealth base (a “traditional wealth tax”) would be a “direct tax” subject to apportionment among the states by population. This Article argues, in contrast, that this possible constitutional restriction on a traditional wealth tax may not matter. If the Court struck down a traditional wealth tax, Congress could instead tax wealth by adjusting a taxpayer’s income tax liability on account of her wealth. This Article describes three general methods for making this adjustment (collectively, “Wealth Integration” methods). A taxpayer’s wealth could affect her taxable income base (the “Base Method”), the applicable rate schedule (the “Rate Method”), or the availability of credits against tax (the “Credit Method”). Wealth Integration methods could replicate the economic effects of a traditional wealth tax but with an intrinsically different constitutional analysis. The Court could strike down Wealth Integration methods only by overruling settled prior precedent, invalidating many current features of the income tax, and fundamentally restricting Congress’s power to tax income under the Sixteenth Amendment. Finally, the possibility that Congress could instead tax wealth through Wealth Integration methods provides a new argument why the Court should uphold a traditional wealth tax. Otherwise, the Court would have to choose between fundamentally restricting the Sixteenth Amendment — and jeopardizing the income tax as we know it — or distinguishing between economically similar taxes on the basis of their formal label while still allowing Congress to tax wealth and diminishing the effect of the apportionment requirement as a restraint on Congress’s taxing power.

Upravljanje porezom na dobitak u bankama u Republici Srbiji

Income tax management includes a set of activities aimed at the legal minimization of income tax liabilities. Due to the tax law flexibility and cross-country differences in income taxation, banks may be in a position to significantly reduce their tax burden. An objective of the paper is to calculate the effective income tax burden of banks in the Republic of Serbia and examine the impact of income tax on banks' operations. A research study conducted on a sample of banks between 2010 and 2016 shows that the effective income tax rate in banks is well below the statutory rate, mostly due to the use of government tax incentives. Furthermore, 25% of the observations have an effective tax rate of 0% despite the reported pre-tax income. The latest increase in the statutory tax rate in the Republic of Serbia has not had an impact on bank leverage, either in the short or long term. This may be an indicator that tax shield effects are not considered when the statutory tax rate is relatively low. The paper also finds that the effective tax rate is not correlated with bank profitability.

Conforming Tax Avoidance and Capital Market Pressure

ABSTRACT In this study, we develop a measure of corporate tax avoidance that reduces both financial and taxable income, which we refer to as “book-tax conforming” tax avoidance. We use simulation analyses, LIFO/FIFO inventory method conversions, and samples of private and public firms to validate our measure. We then investigate the prevalence of conforming tax avoidance within a sample of public firms. Results from the validation tests indicate that our measure of conforming tax avoidance successfully captures book-tax conforming transactions. Consistent with expectations, we also find that the extent to which public firms engage in conforming tax avoidance varies systematically with the capital market pressures. Our study develops a new measure of conforming tax avoidance that should be useful in future research and provides new insights on the extent to which public firms are willing to reduce income tax liabilities at the expense of reporting lower financial income.

Piling On – How Provincial Taxation of Insurance Premiums Costs Consumers

Insurance premiums have been taxed by Canadian governments for so long – some provinces and municipalities collected small levies as early as the late 1800s – that they’ve become a fixture rarely discussed in the literature and the financial press. For many years, insurance premium taxes were collected from insurers as an alternative to taxing their profits. But this practice is now long gone since all Canadian governments tax the corporate income of insurance companies, in addition to premium taxes and other taxes and levies. Most insurance consumers do not know that a provincial insurance premium tax (IPT) ranging from 2 percent to 5 percent is levied on their premiums. In addition, five provinces charge a retail sales tax (RST) ranging from 6 to 15 percent on top of the premium taxes for certain types of insurance. In Quebec and Ontario, the RST rates of respectively 9 and 8 percent generally apply to group life and health insurance, and property and casualty insurance (although Ontario excludes auto insurance). Saskatchewan is the latest province to introduce an RST. Since insurance is a financial service, premiums are exempt from GST/HST. So why do provinces still tax insurance premiums? While IPTs and RSTs on premiums are largely invisible to customers on whom the burden ultimately falls, they generate more than $7 billion of stable and growing provincial government revenues – representing about 7 percent of all provincial taxes collected on goods and services. Premium-based taxes increase the price of insurance products and lower the demand for them. We find that an increase of one percentage point in the provincial IPT rate leads to a 10 percent decrease in the number of life insurance contracts sold. Reduced insurance coverage for natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, other catastrophes, relief to a deceased's family, or relief of the financial burden of illness and disability may lead to increased cost pressures on government budgets down the road. Canadian governments should revisit and reassess the taxes imposed on insurance products. At a minimum, IPT liabilities should be made creditable against corporate income tax liabilities, partly restoring their original role as a substitute for taxing profits. And provinces that impose an RST on IPTinclusive premiums should lead the way and eliminate this form of double taxation. A more ambitious reform would remodel the patchwork of transaction taxes for insurance services to a comprehensive and broad-based, value-added system, bringing down the insurance industry's high transaction tax burden and ensuring greater comparability with other industries.

A LESSON IN VALUATION FROM ESTONIA: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FUNDAMENTAL VALUE OF EQUITY UNDER DISTRIBUTED AND TRADITIONAL PROFIT TAXATION SYSTEMS

Corporate value creation and management are one of the key issues for any business enterprise. A gap exists in research into the implications of the distributed profit taxation (DPT) system in Estonia for corporate value creation. Under the Estonian system of corporate taxation, companies need not pay income tax on undistributed earnings, allowing them to postpone income tax liability indeterminately. This theoretical paper compares the relationship between a company’s equity value and taxation of profits under traditional (or classical) (TPT) and DPT systems. A TPT system is a system where the amount of corporate income tax is determined by the profit the company earned during the taxation period. We show that fundamental equity value under a DPT system should be higher vis-à-vis equity value under a TPT system (ceteris paribus). To illustrate this, we use a dividend discount model and values from a hypothetical company. The equity value under DPT is also higher when financial leverage is considered. The results suggest that conventional valuation models and their inputs should be adjusted when valuing Estonian companies. Ignoring these adjustments runs the risk of undervaluing the equity of Estonian companies, as well as the equity of companies operating under similar tax regimes.

Determining analogies based on the integration of multiple information sources

Forecasting approaches that exploit analogies require the grouping of analogous time series as the first modeling step; however, there has been limited research regarding the suitability of different segmentation approaches. We argue that an appropriate analytical segmentation stage should integrate and trade off different available information sources. In particular, it should consider the actual time series patterns, in addition to the variables that characterize the drivers behind the patterns observed. The simultaneous consideration of both information sources, without prior assumptions regarding the relative importance of each, leads to a multicriteria formulation of the segmentation stage. Here, we demonstrate the impact of such an adjustment to segmentation on the final forecasting accuracy of the cross-sectional multi-state Kalman filter. In particular, we study the relative merits of single and multicriteria segmentation stages for a simulated data set with a range of noise levels. We find that a multicriteria approach consistently achieves a more reliable recovery of the original clusters, and this feeds forward to an improved forecasting accuracy across short forecasting horizons. We then use a US data set on income tax liabilities to verify that this result generalizes to a real-world setting.

Salaried Taxpayers’ Internal States and Assessment Performance Under Self-Assessment System

Malaysian individual tax system had evolved notably since its introduction in 1967. The first reform that impact all taxpayers was the implementation of self-assessment system (SAS) to replace the old assessment system in 2004. This is because SAS had entirely changed the taxpayers’ responsibilities from being assessed by the tax authority to a person who is responsible for assessing own income tax liability. This had triggered debates on whether taxpayers can perform their responsibilities that were previously handled by trained tax personnel. In conjunction with this issue, this paper reports the findings of a quasi-experimental evaluation of salaried individual taxpayers’ in the early stage of SAS implementation. The findings of this study are still relevant to date because even though SAS had been implemented for more than a decade, the problem of taxpayer performance is continuing due to the dynamic nature of taxation in reality. Specifically, this paper reports the influence of taxpayer’s internal states and taxpayer assistance on assessment performance of the individual salaried taxpayers. The data was collected using a quasi-experimental method known as posttest-only no-treatment control group design. The sample comprised post-graduate students, who were actual taxpayers. Among the elements of the taxpayer’s internal states considered in this study, tax knowledge was found to have a significant relationship with assessment performance. Further analysis was conducted which showed that the majority of tax knowledge dimensions had a significant relationship with taxpayer assessment performance.

Preface to the Volume 2 Issue 2 of Indian Pacific Journal of Accounting and Finance

Preface to the Volume 2 Issue 2 of Indian Pacific Journal of Accounting and Finance

Methodological and practical problems related to formation of personal income tax liability identified during tax consulting

Methodological and practical problems related to formation of personal income tax liability identified during tax consulting

EVALUASI MEKANISME PEMOTONGAN DAN PELAPORAN PAJAK OLEH BENDAHARAWAN PEMERINTAH PADA BADAN PERENCANAAN PENELITIAN DAN PEMBANGUNAN KABUPATEN MINAHASA SELATAN

Taxes are the main source of state revenue used to finance development and development. In accordance with the provisions applicable in the taxation field, the party who deducts / taxes the goods derived from the State Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBN) is the government treasurer. Income tax liability. VAT) and. Tax collection (VAT), among others, is the withholding or collection of income tax article 21, Article 22, Article 23,. The purpose of this study is to find out how the mechanism of cutting and reporting by the National Agency for Research and Development of South Minahasa District. The method used is descriptive analysis. The results of this study indicate Research and Development Planning Agency South Minahasa regency has been carrying out obligations in cutting and article 21, article 22, PPn. However, reporting is delayed from the deadline. We recommend that the Research and Development Planning Agency of South Minahasa Regency always pay attention to the time of reporting to not exceed the time limit specified in order to avoid. Keywords: Deductions & reporting, Income tax, Value added, Government treasurer