Refunding Scheme Research Articles

Beware of Cybercrime in Tax Reporting: Threats and How to Protect Yourself

Information and communication technology development has brought significant changes to the taxation system, including the emergence of increasingly complex cybercrimes. This study aims to analyze the evolution of cybercrimes in the digital taxation system and the strategies and challenges in dealing with them. The method used is qualitative normative with a literature study approach. The study results indicate that cybercrimes in taxation include identity fraud, fake tax refund schemes, and international tax evasion, with significant financial impacts. Law Number 1 of 2024 concerning the Second Amendment to the UU ITE provides a more substantial legal basis but still requires harmonization with existing tax regulations. The handling strategy involves applying digital forensics, artificial intelligence, and international cooperation. The main challenge lies in the complexity of cybercrime, which continues to grow, and the need for more comprehensive regulations. This study concludes that a holistic approach is needed to strengthen rules, increase technological capabilities, and educate taxpayers to overcome taxation cybercrimes in the digital era.

Initial Payment and Refunding Scheme for Climate Change Mitigation and Technological Development Among Heterogeneous Countries

Abstract We examine international environmental agreements (IEAs) in which heterogeneous countries work together to not only participate in the abatement of greenhouse gas emissions but also develop breakthrough technologies. In this paper, the country with the most advanced technology (i.e. the technological leader) develops a new abatement technology and distributes it to other countries (i.e. technological laggards) through licensing. We design a new mechanism to achieve cooperation among heterogeneous countries through an initial payment and refunding (IPR) scheme and licensing involving third-party organizations (TPOs). Under our new IPR scheme with licensing, the cost incurred by a technology leader in developing new technology is covered by licensing fees using a portion of the initial payments collected from technological laggards by a TPO. As a result, TPOs sustain IEAs by flexibly adjusting technological laggards’ share of costs for licensing, comprising initial payments and refunds, and the amount of the licensing payment made to the technological leader.

When Efficiency Meets Equity in Congestion Pricing and Revenue Refunding Schemes

When Efficiency Meets Equity in Congestion Pricing and Revenue Refunding Schemes

Sustainable solutions in single-use food containers: A comprehensive life cycle assessment comparing plastic (PP) and its green alternative (PLA coated kraft paper, PLA)

The research conducted a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) of single-use food packaging made from PP, PLA, and Paper/PLA materials using the ReCiPe method. The assessment covered 18 environmental impacts from box processing to end-of-life treatment, with a functional unit (FU) specified as 1,000 units of single-use food container boxes. The dimensions of the boxes were standardized to reflect the average size from the Thailand market and food-delivery boxes. When focused on production stage, PP box shows the greatest impact on overall especially human non-carcinogenic toxicity (285.11 kg 1, 4-DCB). However, when focused on cradle-to-grave life cycle, the PP emerged as the optimal choice of food box due to its comparable environmental impact to biodegradable alternatives, when applying recycling processes. It recycles significantly reduces the total impact up to 73% from their waste-to-energy treatment option. To achieve environmental goals necessitates policy interventions such as extended producer responsibility laws and refund schemes to incentivize responsible disposal. In country lacking waste management infrastructure and collection system, the sensitivity analysis of this research show that biodegradable PLA material emerges as the most suitable choice, particularly over Paper/PLA, offering lower overall environmental impact due to less overall emission in landfill and composting process.

Can the Cans: Determinants of Container Deposit Behavior before and after Introduction of a Container Refund Scheme.

Container deposit schemes are often hailed as a useful avenue to increase consumer recycling rates. Yet, there is little research investigating within-person changes in people's beliefs and behavior following the implementation of these schemes, or tests of the mechanisms by which such change has occurred. The current study fills this knowledge gap and assessed container recycling behavior and habits as well as the social cognition factors of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and intentions in a sample of 90 Queenslanders before the implementation of the container deposit scheme and one and three months post-implementation. Analysis of variance indicated more frequent recycling behavior following the implementation of the scheme, as well as stronger habits, intentions, and perceived behavioral control. Such a concomitant change in behavior, beliefs, and habits provides support for behavior change theory, while also flagging potential targets for strategies that can be paired with container deposit schemes to enhance their efficacy and uptake.

Assessment of factors influencing Indonesian residents’ intention to use a deposit–refund scheme for PET bottle waste

The collection rate is a difficult and important issue in the management of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle waste, as it is related to the behavior of the community to participate and comply with the system established by the government. One system that has been shown to increase the collection rate of PET bottle waste is the deposit–refund scheme (DRS). We tested residents’ intention to participate in the DRS using the theory of planned behavior and complemented it with several important variables that could influence the model. The method used is partial least square-structural equation modeling. The result of the study is that all the variables studied were positively influenced according to their respective paths. Nevertheless, environmental awareness is the latent variable with the strongest positive effect on attitude, and attitude has the strongest positive effect on intention. Public information is the latent variable that positively influences all variables related to intention. The proposed model can be applied globally to identify factors that influence recycling participation, particularly for DRS, and help achieve sustainable development goals while initiating a circular economy by recycling plastic bottle waste.

International best practices for e-waste take back and policy interventions for India

PurposeIndia generates around two million tonnes of e-waste every year, and it is increasing at a very high rate of 30%. However, due to inefficient handling of infrastructure and limited number of collection centres along with the absence of proper incentive structure for producer and recyclers, 95% of e-waste reaches to unorganized sector for disposal. Consumers are not aware of the need of proper e-waste disposal and in absence of proper motivation and they are not inclined towards recycling process. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the best practices of e-waste take adopted all over the world to implement effective policy interventions for e-waste management in India and other emerging economies.Design/methodology/approachThis paper has recommended preventive as well as curative policy interventions on the basis of best e-waste management practices of Germany, Italy and Japan; life cycle assessment of e-waste; and SWOT analysis of Indian electronic product industry.FindingsPreventive measures include a deposit refund scheme wherein a consumer will be responsible for depositing a refundable fees during the purchase of the product. The amount should be arrived at keeping in mind cost involved in handling e-waste and ensure some motivation for the consumers to give back used product. To ensure proper tracking of the product, Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be used which will be activated at the time of sale of product and remain so until product reaches some designated recycling space or recycler and consumer is returned back his deposit fee. Subsidy to the producers and recyclers can also be provided by the government to further incentivize the whole process. An example of mobile phones has been used to understand the proposed deposit fees and associated cost structure. Curative measures to reduce the generation of e-waste in long run for managing the discussed issue have also been proposed.Originality/valueThis study is an initiative for proposing and implementing best e-waste take back techniques in a developing economy like India by acquiring learnings from best/advanced economies in terms of e-waste take back.

The sequence matters: Expert opinions on policy mechanisms for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage

This paper presents the results of a globally distributed survey on policies for incentivizing bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). The current lack of policy incentives to support the implementation of BECCS constitutes a major deployment barrier. Therefore, scientists and policymakers are now debating the optimal BECCS policy framework. Previous studies have presented theoretical analyses of policy options to spur deployment, yet despite the considerable influence of experts on policy processes, very few studies have explored expert opinions. Drawing on an online survey of experts (N = 46), we explore their policy preferences and whether those preferences differ or converge between experts from different working sectors. The results show that a tax and refund scheme, a flat-rate subsidy, and reverse auctioning are considered more suitable than other measures. Furthermore, most experts agree that rather than a stand-alone policy, a policy mix would be needed in order to support BECCS deployment. Several experts propose a sequence of policies, moving from publicly funded supply-push policies in the short term to budget-neutral demand-pull policies in the longer term. Regarding various subsidy schemes, respondents favor investment subsidies or results-based subsidies based on stored biogenic carbon dioxide. The relatively minor differences in the response patterns between groups of experts suggest that a consensus on a preferred BECCS policy pathway might be forming across different sectors and interest groups. Therefore, our results could inform policymakers on policy instruments for BECCS that are considered most suitable by experts and thus help to shape the policy pathway for BECCS.

Combinatorial Civic Crowdfunding with Budgeted Agents: Welfare Optimality at Equilibrium and Optimal Deviation

Civic Crowdfunding (CC) uses the ``power of the crowd" to garner contributions towards public projects. As these projects are non-excludable, agents may prefer to ``free-ride," resulting in the project not being funded. Researchers introduce refunds for single project CC to incentivize agents to contribute, guaranteeing the project's funding. These funding guarantees are applicable only when agents have an unlimited budget. This paper focuses on a combinatorial setting, where multiple projects are available for CC and agents have a limited budget. We study specific conditions where funding can be guaranteed. Naturally, funding the optimal social welfare subset of projects is desirable when every available project cannot be funded due to budget restrictions. We prove the impossibility of achieving optimal welfare at equilibrium for any monotone refund scheme. Further, given the contributions of other agents, we prove that it is NP-Hard for an agent to determine its optimal strategy. That is, while profitable deviations may exist for agents instead of funding the optimal welfare subset, it is computationally hard for an agent to find its optimal deviation. Consequently, we study different heuristics agents can use to contribute to the projects in practice. We demonstrate the heuristics' performance as the average-case trade-off between the welfare obtained and an agent's utility through simulations.

Recent Advances in Extended Producer Responsibility Initiatives for Plastic Waste Management in Germany and UK

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) initiatives have shown success in enhancing the independent collection of plastic waste, but the existing recycling industry framework poses challenges to achieving optimal recyclability levels. For addressing this issue, various legislative strategies, including non-profit EPR, door-to-door collection systems, and deposit refund schemes (DRS), have been implemented in some countries such as the UK and Germany. As plastic waste management responsibility is shared between consumers and producers in Europe, with consumers generating 40% of plastic waste and producers being responsible for the remaining 60%, this review examines the impact of EPR and DRS programs on consumer and producer behaviors. The article also explores the potential for circularity and sustainability of recycling technologies, including their challenges and limitations. The significance of this study lies in its examination of the impact of EPR and DRS programs on consumer and producer behaviors, providing insight into sustainable practices that promote waste minimization and foster the adoption of recycling methods. Ultimately, the review recommends quick action in four crucial areas, including standardization, infrastructure investment, partnership models, and the production of higher-value recycled materials, all of which require supply chain collaboration.

How have waste management policies impacted the flow of municipal waste? An empirical analysis of 14 European countries

Waste management policies aim to divert waste from lower positions on the waste hierarchy such as landfill and incineration to higher positions in the hierarchy such as energy recovery and recycling. However, empirical evaluations of such policies are scarce. This study highlighted the effect of waste management policies on the amount of waste treated with landfill, incineration, energy recovery and recycling by analysing a panel dataset consisting of 14 European countries and the period 1996 to 2018. Findings from a seemingly unrelated regression model suggest that the landfill ban is associated with a decrease in landfill waste, but an increase in incineration, energy recovery and recycling waste. The landfill tax is also correlated with an increase in energy recovery waste but, in contrast, it is associated with a reduction in incineration and recycling waste. Meanwhile, the deposit refund scheme is associated with a decrease in the amount of landfill waste. Concerning the effects on total waste generated, regression results from a fixed effects model indicate that the landfill tax and the deposit refund scheme are both correlated with a reduction in the amount of waste generated. These findings contribute to the scarce academic literature evaluating waste management policies and may better inform policy makers on their longer-term implications.

Life cycle assessment of plastic packaging recycling embedded with responsibility distribution as driver for environmental mitigation

Life cycle assessment modelling of multi-cycle recycling systems is challenging. There is still neither consensus on applying allocation approaches nor a one-size-fits-all solution. This study proposes an allocation approach embedded with the responsibility distribution of stakeholders rather than the standard approach, which is assessed based on stages. It is applied to the case study of plastic packaging recycling and compared to simple and economic allocation cut-off methods. A total of four multiple recycling or cascade utilisation scenarios are assessed, consisting of the linear system (disposal), mechanical recycling, waste to energy and chemical recycling, for at least one of the cycles. Scenario 2, with mechanical recycling as the end-of-life management in all three multiple cycles, has the lowest overall GHG emissions (∼4.8 t CO2eq/t plastic packaging) regardless of allocation method, even after considering deducted savings due to the degraded quality along the cycles. The simple cut-off method could not drive the selection in the first cycle toward the recycling alternatives (Scenario 2–4) with overall lower emissions as the GHG saving from utilising recycled resources are accounted for in the second cycle. Regarding eutrophication potential, as the burdening impact of disposal is significantly higher, recycling options accounted for following the simple cut-off method are preferable even when the burdening effect is entirely embraced by the first cycle without the unburdening accounting. Economic allocation cut-offs provide a better incentive to recycle in the assessed cycles. However, the standard accounting is by stages such as material production, product manufacturing, recycling and disposal. It is unclear whose responsibility, either the raw material producer (MP), the product manufacturer (PM) or the consumer (C). The proposed method with defined responsibility (e.g. 6.2 t CO2eq/t by MP; 2.9 t CO2eq/t by PM; 0.5 t CO2eq/t by C in Scenario 1) is more effective for environmental mitigation strategies (e.g. taxation and incentives, deposit refund scheme) of the plastic life cycle. The scenarios assessment serves as a stepping stone to optimise the allocation among the identified stakeholders in future work according to local conditions.

Extended producer responsibility in developing economies: Assessment of promoting factors through retail electronic firms for sustainable e-waste management.

The adoption of the extended producers' responsibility (EPR) principle as a mitigation strategy for e-waste management has gained impetus over the past few years. However, e-waste management in developing economies through retail electronic firms' or producer responsibility organization is still inceptive. This study identified and analysed promoting factors of EPR principle adoption through retail electronic firms in the Ghanaian electronic industry. Through extant literature and stakeholders' perspectives, 15 factors were identified as strategic and operational promoting factors, which were evaluated by experts. Subsequently, the grey Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory technique was used to analyse the data obtained. The outcome of the study suggests that operational factors have more influence than strategic factors to determine the adoption of the EPR principle. In addition, most of the important operational factors tend to be enabled by both push and pull measures by supply chain stakeholders. In the short term, adopting an advanced deposit recycling refund scheme tends to be the most effective elementary operational factor, which can push retailers to adopt the EPR principle. The significant pull elementary factors that need short-term attention include the opening up and creation of new market opportunities for e-companies as well as resilient and effective resources management. The study findings suggest that Ghana's present policy framework is limited for the adoption of the EPR principle by retail electronic firms. The study contributes to identifying promoting factors for adoption of the EPR principle from the perspectives of both the external and internal stakeholders in the electronic industry with emphasis on push and pull strategy.

A Refunding Scheme to Incentivize Narrow-Spectrum Antibiotic Development

The rapid rise of antibiotic resistance is a serious threat to global public health. The situation is exacerbated by the “antibiotics dilemma”: Developing narrow-spectrum antibiotics against resistant bacteria is most beneficial for society, but least attractive for companies, since their usage and sales volumes are more limited than for broad-spectrum drugs. After developing a general mathematical framework for the study of antibiotic resistance dynamics with an arbitrary number of antibiotics, we identify efficient treatment protocols. Then, we introduce a market-based refunding scheme that incentivizes pharmaceutical companies to develop new antibiotics against resistant bacteria and, in particular, narrow-spectrum antibiotics that target specific bacterial strains. We illustrate how such a refunding scheme can solve the antibiotics dilemma and cope with various sources of uncertainty that impede antibiotic R &D. Finally, connecting our refunding approach to the recently established Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Action Fund, we discuss how our proposed incentivization scheme could be financed.

The Law and Policy of VAT Tourist Tax Refund Schemes: A Comparative Analysis

Many forms of value added tax (VAT) or goods and services tax (GST) include a tax refund scheme for goods acquired by tourists when they visit a jurisdiction. These schemes have not been widely researched, and this article aims to fill this gap by providing a detailed discussion of the policy, legal design and administration of tourist tax refund schemes. The authors identify three main rationales for such schemes: (i) the destination principle, which is the jurisdictional basis for most VATs; (ii) the goal of providing an incentive to the tourism industry; and (iii) the principle of equity, or fairness. The authors then explore policy issues and risks for the design and operation of the main tourist tax refund schemes around the world. They analyse the main elements of the European Union (EU) VAT refund scheme, where the concept originated, and then do a detailed comparison of the design and administration of such schemes with different features GST in Australia and VAT in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The analysis reveals that countries have quite varied design elements in their tourism refund schemes and face different operational challenges in their implementation. The authors identify ways to improve the design and administration of the schemes in Australia and China in light of the analysis in this article.

“Cashless Taxpayer” – An Innovative Tool to Stimulate Reduction of the Shadow Economy in Poland

Promoting electronic payments and a cashless economy is an important factor in reducing the shadow economy, increasing VAT collection and reducing VAT fraud. Starting from 1 January 2022, Poland joins pioneer countries in constructing tax incentives for cashless payments. So-called “cashless taxpayers” gain a very important advantage: the refund of VAT in 15 days. Poland puts technological tools at the taxable persons’ disposal that, without involving them, will verify whether they have met the criteria for the application of the preferential tax refund scheme on the basis of the data submitted online to the tax administration. Thanks to new technologies and the digitalization of the Polish tax administration such ambitious programmes are possible.

Supreme Court Explains the Excess Input VAT Refund Scheme under New GST Law

In line with the neutrality principle, India’s new GST law provides for refund of excess input VAT when input supplies are taxed at a higher rate than output supplies. However, the refund is available only where input goods suffer higher tax and no refund is available for higher tax on input services. Taxable persons challenged this discrimination between input goods and input services. Recently, the Supreme Court of India has rejected this challenge. In this article, the author explains the Supreme Court’s decision and its far-reaching implications for taxable persons.

Long-Term Climate Treaties with a Refunding Club

We show that an appropriately-designed “Refunding Club” can simultaneously solve both free-riding problems in mitigating climate change—participating in a coalition with an emission reduction target and enduring voluntary compliance with the target once the coalition has been formed. Countries in the Club pay an initial fee into a fund that is invested in assets. In each period, part of the fund is distributed among the Club members in relation to the emission reductions they have achieved, suitably rescaled by a weighting factor. We show that an appropriate refunding scheme can implement any feasible abatement path a Club wants to implement. The contributions to the initial fund can be used to disentangle efficiency and distributional concerns and/or to make a coalition stable. Making the grand coalition stable in the so-called “modesty approach” requires less than 0.5% of World GDP. Finally, we suggest ways to foster initial participation, to incorporate equity concerns with regard to developing countries, and ways to ease the burden to fill the initial fund.

Personalized Pareto-improving pricing-and-routing schemes for near-optimum freight routing: An alternative approach to congestion pricing

Traffic congestion constitutes a major problem in urban areas. Trucks contribute to congestion and have a negative impact on the environment due to their size, slower dynamics and higher fuel consumption. The individual routing decisions made by truck drivers do not lead to system optimum operations and contribute to traffic imbalances especially in places where the volume of trucks is relatively high. In this paper, we design a coordination mechanism for truck drivers that uses pricing-and-routing schemes that can help alleviate traffic congestion in a general transportation network. We consider the user heterogeneity in Value-Of-Time (VOT) by adopting a multi-class model with stochastic Origin–Destination (OD) demands for the truck drivers. The main characteristic of the mechanism is that the coordinator asks the truck drivers to declare their desired OD pair and pick their individual VOT from a set of N available options, and guarantees that the resulting pricing-and-routing scheme is Pareto-improving, i.e. every truck driver will be better-off compared to the User Equilibrium (UE) and that every truck driver will have an incentive to truthfully declare his/her VOT, while leading to a revenue-neutral (budget balanced) on average mechanism. This approach enables us to design personalized (VOT-based) pricing-and-routing schemes. We show that the Optimum Pricing Scheme (OPS) can be calculated by solving a nonconvex optimization problem. To improve computational efficiency, we propose an Approximately Optimum Pricing Scheme (AOPS) and prove that it satisfies the aforementioned properties. Both pricing-and-routing schemes are compared to the Congestion Pricing with Uniform Revenue Refunding (CPURR) scheme through extensive simulation experiments where it is shown that OPS and AOPS achieve a much lower expected total travel time and expected total monetary cost for the users compared to the CPURR scheme, without negatively affecting the rest of the network. These results demonstrate the efficiency of personalized (VOT-based) pricing-and-routing schemes.

Willingness of end users to pay for e-waste recycling

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The sheer volume of electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) has presently been generated in Vietnam, posing a growing concern regarding its impact can have on the environment and human health. Therefore, the need for developing policies and regulations towards the environmentally sound management of e-waste is becoming crucial. Although the municipalities play an important role in e-waste recycling program, there does not appear to be any study involving residents’ perceptions on e-waste management. This paper aims to examine the influencing factors of end users’ willingness to pay and their payment preferences toward e-waste recycling. METHODS: The logistic regression model was employed to analyze a qualified data set collected through a personal interview survey in Danang city, Vietnam. All analyses were conducted using Statistical Package for Social Sciences software (version 22.0). FINDINGS: The results revealed that the end users’ willingness to participate in recycling programs, laws and regulations, inconvenience of recycling and past experience were four key determinants significantly contributing to the willingness to pay for recycling e-waste. With regards recycling payment methods, most of the participants (36%) were in favor of deposit and refund scheme, while pre-disposal fees and advanced recycling fees came in second and third place (25.8% and 21%, respectively), making monthly payment of recycling fees the least preferred (10.2%). CONCLUSION: These findings may provide policy-makers with crucial information for better e-waste management policy development, which helps address the conflict between development and conservation, may be applicable in Vietnam and other countries as well.