Tax Money Research Articles

Review of managing the risks of offshore banking and its implications for the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone

As more and more Chinese and foreign-funded banks settle in the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone (CSPFTZ), it has become an imperative to enhance risk management of offshore banking. At the international level, the regulatory effort for offshore banking mainly focuses on tax evasion and money laundering. Existing regulatory frameworks have established standards to identify countries providing facilities for money laundering and developed punitive measures. In terms of strategy, it is suggested that, firstly, relevant regulatory measures should be improved in the short term, and it is necessary to define the scope of offshore banking and regulatory measures for Chinese banks and foreign-funded banks under a suitable legal framework. Secondly, it is necessary to establish risk exposure mechanism and risk evaluation system for the offshore banking in the CSPFTZ, while risk management measures are implemented based on on-site supervision. Thirdly, in the medium and long term, it is necessary to enhance management of potential risks which can be created by offshore banking due to deregulation. Fourthly, on the one hand, specific regulations should be formulated to provide a regulatory basis for taxation; on the other hand, tax informational exchange agreements (TIEAs) may be used as a reference for achieving effective tax regulation.

Whose South?: Lessons Learned from Studying the South at the University of Mississippi

Whose South?Lessons Learned from Studying the South at the University of Mississippi Charles Reagan Wilson (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Instant Civil War capsules, which, when dropped in water, produce a Yankee and Confederate soldier. Trivialization of the Civil War at work. All photos from the author’s “Southern Tacky” collection, by Danny K Photography, 2016. [End Page 96] On the occasion of my retirement from the University of Mississippi in 2014, I knew I had to talk about the South, the topic I have spent my career studying, pondering, writing about, and teaching. The more I thought about what to present in a final, university-wide lecture, my personal journey seemed relevant, for I think my family and personal stories parallel some developments in the South’s history. My roots and raising were in middle Tennessee, as part of a very close-knit southern family. My parents were from small towns in tobacco country north of Nashville. They were what historians would call the “plain folk”—not wealthy, not the stereotypical poor whites, but, in my father’s case at least, poor in worldly goods as a child. My father’s people were burdened with a hardscrabble life as tenant farmers. My mother’s life was more sheltered, growing up in the small town of Springfield, near the Kentucky border. Neither had traveled farther than Nashville, but that changed when the United States entered World War II. Their story was typical of so many southerners of the early twentieth century, and the Great Depression of the 1930s was a particularly hard context in which to grow up. Many historians would now say that World War II had a greater impact on changing the South than even the Civil War did. My father joined the new Army Air Force and was stationed for three years in Bassingbourn, England. One of the most important themes in the study of the South now is globalization, and my father was part of that early on, in his uprooting from rural, farm Tennessee to be sent halfway across the globe. After the war ended in the spring of 1945, my dad came home, and he and my mom married within a few months, and moved to Nashville, becoming a part of the postwar migration of southerners to cities and towns. The 1960 census was the first one in which more southerners lived in cities than in rural areas, and my family’s experience reflected that change. I was born in Nashville, but when I was nine years old, in 1957, we left Tennessee to move to El Paso, Texas, a move occasioned by my mother’s worsening health in the wet and humid Southeast. So we went west, going on Highway 80, shortly after which the federal government built what’s now called the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system. That program would tie the nation together in productive ways, and one result was bringing the South more directly into connection with the rest of the nation. That interstate highway system was a tangible expression of one of the most important factors in modernizing the South and making life better for our people, namely, the investment the federal government made in sending a disproportionate amount of federal tax money to the South to stimulate economic development. In any event, this uprooting severed me from an extended kin of grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins, but it bound me even closer to my nuclear family. We had joined the movement to the Sunbelt, that term coined in the 1980s to reflect the South’s close ties to the Southwest, stretching to southern California. I grew [End Page 97] Click for larger view View full resolution Texas glass collected by the author while living in the state. up in a very cosmopolitan, suburban place—El Paso, a city with a mobile military population, high tech researchers associated with the defense industry, and strong cultural influences from southern California (my high school was just like that one in American Graffiti). And I was amidst an intriguing Anglo– Hispanic culture of a Mexican border town. In those days, it was a free-flowing border where...

Ethics of Tax Evasion: Evidence from Self-employed Tax-payers' of Dessie Town Administration, Ethiopia

Tax evasion in most developing countries is so widespread and development is much exacerbate by the fact that not many of these countries have made an effort to measure the ethical reasons that taxpayers give. This study, therefore, is designed to describe the ethics tax evasion in Dessie town administration, Ethiopia by taking evidence from 336 randomly selected self-employed taxpayers through a 7 point likert scale questionnaire. Accordingly, this study result shows that tax evasion is ethical in certain situations, and sometimes it is unethical in some other situations. The top mean score ranked arguments that taxpayers gave to justify tax evasion include government corruption, unfair tax system, government discrimination against political affiliation, tax un-affordability, when the money collected is wasted, and high tax rate. In contrary, tax evasion is not ethical when most of the money collected is spent wisely, if the money collected is spent on worthy projects, when the money collected is spent on projects that do benefit taxpayers, and when the money collected is spent on projects that do not benefit taxpayers. The other finding of this study is that the ethics of tax evasion is different among gender, as well as over academic status of the respondents. Females oppose tax evasion than male i.e. females are more ethical than male. Likewise, educated are more ethical than uneducated, this is with the view that tax evasion is unethical. In general, the overall finding of this study indicated that the government should aware the taxpayers that there is proper administration, fair tax system and money collected are spent wisely.

Evolutionary Economic Geography for OFCs: Do Political Ties to the Onshore Reduce Capital Inflow Volatility?

AbstractThis paper analyses the structural change in small‐island economies—sometimes labeled offshore financial centers (OFCs)—that have seen wealth‐generating activities through offshore financial services decrease in value since 2008. At the same time, OFCs have come under increasing scrutiny from supranational organizations such Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development and European Union for perceived unfair tax practices and money laundering activities. Some OFCs have proactively adjusted to this sea change by broadening the economic base through development of new offshore business activities such as e‐gaming, film industry, and niche manufacturing. Most have increased co‐operation with onshore regulatory bodies to promote service and product legitimacy. Econometric analysis explores the assertion that OFCs that do not have a political link to the onshore may be exposed to greater capital inflows volatility than OFCs that have such a link. Case study analysis using the theoretical lens of evolutionary economic geography illustrates that a small OFC is creating spatialities of economic novelty by adapting economic development strategies deployed during the successful development of the center prior to the recent recession. Our findings reveal the importance of political links to the onshore to reduce capital inflow volatility and the importance of local public–private interaction to legitimize post‐recession development.

Japanese modern municipal retail and wholesale markets in comparison with European markets

ABSTRACTThis article seeks to assess the relevance of market ideas outside the European context. In pre-modern Japan, there was neither street market nor retail market but wholesale markets in cities. Feudal lords permitted wholesale dealers to operate in the market as long as the dealers paid either tribute such as fish or tax money to their lords. The Meiji Restoration in the late nineteenth century brought an end to the feudal system. In modern Japan, the problem of food supply in the city arose after the Japanese-Russo War. The Rice Riots broke out in 1918, and drove many cities to open their own municipal retail markets in order to supply urban dwellers with food and daily necessities. Fixed and marked price and cash payment were the operating principles of those municipal retail markets. These principles represented the characteristic features of the modern retail trade. Such municipal retail markets played an important role in the modernization of the retail trade in Japan.

Guns and Butter: The Welfare State, the Carceral State, and the Politics of Exclusion in the Postwar United States

In 1970 a man wrote to California governor Ronald Reagan in support of disfranchising welfare recipients. “I believe this would be one of the most important pieces of legislation that could be enacted,” he explained. The writer asserted that people receiving state benefits forfeited their citizenship rights: “They are, in my opinion, no more than second rate citizens and because they continually draw welfare, I do not believe they should have the right to have a say in our government or how our tax money is spent.” While denying welfare recipients the right to vote was a marginal (and constitutionally dubious) proposition during the 1970s, opposition to granting full rights to suspect populations saturated political discourse on social and criminal policy. Americans persistently articulated a profound frustration with how recent legal and political reforms distributed resources and political voice to “undeserving” groups. As one police officer wrote to New York governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1973: “It seems like the law abiding citizens have no rights whatsoever, except the responsibility and obligation ‘to work in order to support and care for the parasites of society, the common and habitual criminal.’” Another woman expressed similar frustrations to Rockefeller after her home was robbed, describing herself as “a law abiding citizen who feels she is discriminated against in favor of dope addicts and welfare cheats.”1 To illuminate how these questions of who deserved rights, state resources, and political voice animated policy transformations during the last decades of the twentieth century, this article connects the history of the U.S. carceral state and that of the nation’s welfare state. Welfare policy and criminal policy were principal sites where society negotiated

TAX EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION AND INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN BRAZIL

Globalization and internationalization of companies are phenomena that need to be considered by modern tax administrations. In many situations, such as tax evasion, harmful tax competition and money laundering, domestic statutes seem to be ineffectual in a global dimension. Fo cope with that, new forms of regulation and regulators emerge. Under this view, an effort towards signing international treaties, conventions and agreements seems to be a feasible solution. The brazilian legal framework contains principles and rules that make international cooperation and exchange of information (eoi) with other countries possible. Furthermore, the brazilian tax administration has wide-ranging access powers to obtain information for international exchange purposes and has the tools to coercively produce such information. Brazil is following the right path to implement international exchange of information standards. However, there are some obstacles that need to be fixed for a more efficient implementation of these mechanisms. This article examines some topics of the brazilian legal and institutional framework on the tax exchange of information, such as a new model of approach of the tax administration, the tax transparency agenda and the international agreements on eoi matters, the brazilian supreme court rulings under bank secrecy and the rights of brazilian taxpayers regarding eoi.

Words Matter

Beyond the standard definitions found in the dictionary, words commonly used in the recreation field have subtle, yet powerful connotations of which senders and receivers of information may not be consciously aware. These words elicit different conscious and subconscious reactions that likely bear significant consequences for recreation agencies and university departments. This study measured the attitudes of three distinct populations (university students, citizens and recreation professionals) toward five words commonly used in the field: recreation, leisure, play, activity and sport. A semantic differential instrument was used to gather responses and interpret connotative meanings relating to the words. Further, a survey was administered to a random sample of citizens in a Midwestern state regarding applied questions (e.g., asking citizens if it were more appropriate to spend tax money to provide recreation services or to provide leisure services). A factor analysis yielded three factors: evaluative (good-bad), potency (powerful-powerless) and activity (fast-slow). Within and across subject group comparisons were subsequently performed on the three factors and significant differences amongst the three populations in the evaluative, potency and activity factors were found for each of the five words.

The Next Rising Tax Haven

The Next Rising Tax Haven

Swedish politicians' view of obstacles when dealing with priority settings in health care.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe main obstacles for politicians when dealing with healthcare priority setting. The study had an exploratory descriptive design based on interviews with 18 politicians from two different county councils in Sweden. The interviews were analyzed using inductive qualitative content analysis. The politicians highlighted the importance of, and difficulties in, communicate political missions; the politicians in this study saw the media as not always being fair watchdogs, implying that possibly important but unpopular prioritizing decisions were not made because of the risks of being badly reported and therefore not re-elected. Breaking up established structures in care practice is difficult and change takes time, partly because of existing higher level financing and rules and the system's traditional separation of facilities and services. Although the politicians highlighted their limited power to influence and control resource allocation they could give small and "lower profile", low-prioritized disciplines control of their own budgets and base payments on the results the disciplines accomplished. This study highlights the difficulties that politicians experience, for example, having to take unpleasant decisions and thereby run the risk of being scrutinized by media, which in turn could influence how effectively tax money is being used.

Achieving Relational Objectives Through Sponsorship

With growing awareness of the importance of establishing good relationships with immediate stakeholder groups the scope of sponsorship broadens. Management objectives concerning sponsorship are now often either commercial or relational in nature. As most studies focus on the assessment of the economic effectiveness of sponsorship activities this research investigates how sponsorship can aid in the achievement of a relational objective, specifically the development of citizen commitment towards a public authority. Questionnaire data from 237 spectators of a publicly sponsored sports event were collected and analysed. The findings suggest a rational model of sponsorship effectiveness and support congruence theoretical considerations. The strongest determinants of commitment towards the sponsor are positive attitudes towards the sponsorship activity, the belief that public sponsorship is seen as beneficial for the region. Further, positive attitudes towards the sponsorship depend on whether citizens perceive the sponsorship activity to be a waste of financial resources. This corroborates the idea that sponsorship activities with relational objectives are elaborated on the normative belief whether tax money should be used to sponsor an event. Public sector bodies should also pay attention to explicitly communicate the reasons and benefits of the sponsorship activity in order to enhance perceived event-sponsor congruence. This study explains the dynamics in the sponsorship model that impact on the achievement of relational objectives and identifies managerial implications on how to manage sponsorship activities in a public sector context.

Print Media Coverage around Failed and Successful Tobacco Tax Initiatives: The South Carolina Experience

Taxes are a critical tobacco control policy, yet little systematic research has determined how mass media represent tobacco taxes. This study aimed to characterize print media coverage of tobacco tax initiatives in South Carolina (SC). Content analysis. The setting comprised 346 news articles from 2006 to 2010 in the four main SC newspapers. N/A . A coding scheme with good inter-rater reliability (α = .90-1.0) assessed article type (news vs. opinion), arguments, and the story tendency regarding whether it was in favor of the tax, against the tax, or neutral/mixed. Chi-square tests and t-tests assessed hypotheses regarding the prevalence and number of different arguments and article tendencies across different time periods (i.e., legislature in session vs. not in session; successful vs. unsuccessful initiative) and article types. Most articles were favorable toward the tax (59%), with favorable articles most likely to be found in opinion pieces than in news articles. Compared to unsuccessful tax initiative years (2006 to 2009), articles from the successful year (2010) were more likely to include pro-tax arguments about how the tax can raise state revenues (47% vs. 33%; p = .020) and pay for tobacco control programs (40% vs. 26%; p = .014). Unsuccessful years included a relatively higher percentage of stories about the lack of consensus regarding how the tax money should be spent (25% vs. 11%; p = .014). Within articles, the mean number of arguments favorable toward the tax and the mean number of economic arguments were marginally higher in the successful year compared to the unsuccessful years. Study results suggest that advocates build consensus and communicate more clearly on how tobacco tax revenue streams should be spent.

El Vaquero

El Vaquero Dana Fitz Gale (bio) Six months after my husband’s stroke, I met the shepherd. I don’t mean that in the figurative sense—I’m not that type. I mean an actual shepherd, one who tends the sheep that graze the rugged mountainside above our house. The shepherd is from Mexico, from Veracruz. The dialect there differs from the one in Zacatecas, where I spent my Peace Corps years, and also from the one in Merida, where long ago I honeymooned with Thom. I met my shepherd on a Wednesday, early in June, while I was on my morning hike. The bitterroot and lupine were in bloom. Matisse, my dachshund, was off his leash and chasing squirrels. When I reached the south slope, where the forest ends and only a few Ponderosa twisted into odd shapes by the wind remain, I stopped. I’ve always loved this view: the valley floor, our house, the college campus, the whole town. All this, and not a hundred yards away, a sight I’d never seen in all my years of following that trail. It was an honest-to-God covered wagon, painted green. The type you sometimes see in front of roadside pioneer museums, except that this one was in good repair. The canvas top looked new. I’d barely started to consider explanations—if some fool was going to stage a Wild West reenactment on my precious mountain, there’d be hell to pay—when my dog yelped, and a pair of border collies pinned him down. “Get off! Get out of here, you beasts!” I whacked at the assailants with my staff. The collies paid no notice. They were rolling Matisse back and forth between them on the ground. I seized the nearest fluffy tail, and the dog connected to it spun around and pulled me off my feet and then broke free. My dog escaped and started running back the way we’d come, the border collies nipping at his heels. And then, the voice. A deep voice, saying “stop” in Spanish, and the collies both abandoned chase and slunk away into the trees. I was still [End Page 113] sitting where I’d fallen, on the trail. A shadow lengthened over me and I looked up, shading my eyes, and saw a stranger on a horse. A man in a sombrero on a horse the color of dense fog, and yes, it did occur to me that I had suffered some sort of cerebral accident, like Thom’s. I touched my head to see if it was still intact, while the stranger stepped down from his saddle, asking me in Spanish was I hurt? In different circumstances, I would certainly have chastised him for his aggressive dogs. I might even have threatened legal action, but as it turned out, I could not speak at all, too startled by the silver conchas on the stranger’s hatband, by his open-necked white shirt, his thin mustache. He helped me stand and only then did I notice the sheep, fanned out across the meadow, and remember something I’d seen on the news the week before. The city had used tax money to buy one hundred twenty head of sheep as an experiment in weed control. The shepherd’s name is Javier, and he is unhappy in this country. He speaks little English and has no affinity for sheep. These facts, and others, I learned shortly after I revealed that I could speak his language. Javier is not a shepherd normally—he wanted me to know this right away. Javier is a vaquero. He took this Northern Rockies job because he saw an advertisement on the Internet. Alas, the ad had been misleading; he’d believed that he’d be herding cattle here. I wasn’t sure if he was being serious. I was fairly certain that the true vaqueros had been gone a century or more. I thought perhaps this man was having fun at the expense of an old, gray-haired gringa, which is how I must have looked to him. “¿El vaquero?” He could not have missed the skepticism in my voice. “¿El Internet...

Main Structures in International Cooperation in Criminal Matters at European Level

Creating a European area without borders and free movement gave rise to new forms of expression of cross border crime, but also new opportunities for criminals to evade justice. Cross-border crime concerns at present international drug traffic areas such as risk and high risk, terrorism, human trafficking, counterfeiting of means of electronic payment and cybercrime, tax evasion and money laundering, corruption offenses. Although adopted a series of measures and ways to combat this phenomenon have diversified and adapted to new ways of committing these crimes, some very sophisticated, crime has grown. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen existing institutions - Europol, Eurojust, OLAF, and the creation of new sound institutions - the European Public Prosecutor - able to prevent and combat crime, especially on the borders.

Is the South African effort toward reducing money laundering optimal?

Purpose – A measure of how much money is laundered is required to determine the effectiveness of any anti-money laundering regime and the reduction of money laundering in targeted areas. In the absence of useful estimates, authorities need to look at the best quality data available to arrive at a meaningful estimate and a consequent target for reduction of money laundering. Since tax crimes are viewed as one of the top three sources of laundered money, an understanding of the underlying predicate offence – tax evasion – may be indicative of the values or volumes involved in order to facilitate a target setting process. It is suggested that a “whole of government approach”, as is advanced by the OECD, is applied between the tax administration and the financial intelligence centre in South Africa. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – By reviewing tax gap and money laundering estimation models and results from South Africa's first tax amnesty, it is proposed that micro analysis methodologies are applied to arrive at an estimate of the size and impact of money laundering which results from tax evasion practices. Findings – By making basic inferences from the results of the 2003 voluntary disclosure programme, it is estimated that a potential revenue gap of between ZAR4 billion and ZAR12 billion exists for personal income tax alone and that the value of personal assets acquired from the proceeds of crime can, at any time, be as high as ZAR1.4 trillion. Originality/value – In the absence of empirical and statistical data, it is necessary for authorities in developing countries to identify and make use of the most relevant and detailed data to assess its effectiveness in identifying, quantifying and reducing money laundering.

Earmarking tobacco taxes for health purposes via median entities.

Fiscal policies are an especially promising lever for reducing the burden of non-communicable diseases and injuries (1). On World No Tobacco Day 2014, World Health Organization (WHO) repeated with greater intensity its well-known proposal (2) on raising tobacco taxes to encourage users to stop or reduce consumption, and to prevent potential users from taking up smoking. Evidence as to why this is an effective strategy abounds (3). Despite concerns over manufacturers’ political influence, technical problems such as tax manipulation, and increased smuggling considerations, it is hoped that governments shall be scaling their efforts toward this direction in the next few years, by enforcing increases in specific excise taxes. A 2011 review of more than 100 econometric studies estimates that doubling inflation-adjusted prices should reduce consumption by about one third (4). In terms of revenue, WHO estimates that raising specific excise taxes on tobacco to double prices would raise about 100 billion US dollars per year worldwide, in addition to the approximately 300 billion US dollars that governments already collect on tobacco (5). Each country enforcing such taxes must decide how to allocate their share of this prospective additional revenue in advance. Careful consideration is particularly important; this is a chance for tobacco to atone, partly at least, for the damage it has inflicted throughout the years of its uncontrollable use. The process of earmarking (or dedicating) revenues from tobacco taxes for health purposes constitutes a fairly recent policy, adopted in various forms globally. Experience demonstrates that public support for higher tobacco taxes is greater when some of the increased revenues are used to support health-focused programmes (6). Rather than paying without knowing where the money is used, earmarked taxes assure taxpayers that these revenues are targeted to specific desirable purposes, regardless of the fiscal authority’s mandate to allocate budgets as they see appropriate. However, economists argue that policy-makers have the opportunity to use these funds in an indirect way, in the sense that fiscal authorities can decrease general-fund spending on targeted expenditures (7). This is especially tempting in conditions of fiscal austerity, particularly for middle- and low-income countries with small budgets and pressing needs. A better, more secure way to benefit health from tobacco taxes has to be found. The solution might lie in median autonomous or semi-autonomous entities, as is the case in several countries. For instance, Thailand’s Thai Health Promotion Foundation receives 2% of the total national tax revenue on alcohol and tobacco products, and supports groups and organizations that are already working on public health issues. Such a foundation could also accept applications to fund healthcare research projects, thus enhancing a country’s scientific capabilities. Its public autonomous status would allow partnerships in both public and private sectors. The foundation would have to report directly to a higher authority, but in essence it would be independent from ministries of finance. Thus its resources would be protected, and smokers would know that their increased taxes are allocated directly to health-focused programmes. Countries differ in their needs, abilities, and priorities. There is no universal approach to the most efficient use of tobacco tax money, but earmarking it to health-focused programmes via an autonomous foundation offers important advantages. Policy-makers who will respond to WHO’s call need to research this and other options thoroughly in order to benefit as much as possible from raising taxes on tobacco.

Alternative Approaches in Evaluating the EU SME Policy: Answers to the Question of Impact and Legitimization

The objective of the paper is the determination and criticism of existing EU SME Policy evaluation standards and of existing alternatives enabling the discussion of improvements. The paper uses a comparison of different evaluation methods applied by the OECD, the EU and Sweden and of funding programmes provided by KfW and the German Ministry of Economics; therefore, the paper is an explorative case study. OECD and EU evaluations do not determine causal relationships between funding allocation and effects. The evaluations of the KfW and the German Ministry of Economics use an empirical quantitative approach and determine direct causal relations. In order to fulfil the requirements of legitimizing functions for the SME policy, it is recommended to further develop the EU funding policy and evaluation according to the “German model” both in terms of the institutional framework and in terms of the evaluation of impacts through funding policy measures. Definition of minimum requirements and alternative possibilities for EU SME policy evaluation in order to close the legitimisation gap between the allocation of tax money and impact proof (cost-benefit ratio).

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF IMPROVEMENTS IN THE FIELDS OF ENFORCEMENT AND TAX POLICIES IN SERBIA

In this work we are dealing with the possible and more likely development ideas and opportunities which could happen in Serbia. These ideas are based on the Governmental policies and even more on the need of the Serbian economy and its citizens. For a long period of time the economy was struggling and every small step towards development is noticeable. Apart from having the same idea of joining the EU different governments in the past and now claim that they will lead Serbia on the shortest and most efficient path to the EU. Their political ideas differ somehow but certainly the decisions they are making are just following one pattern. Everyday citizens and businesses just experience the same as in any other country which has its economy in transition. Much depends on the determination to make a certain step towards economic development. Sometimes it looks like the steps were made with a big delay and that everyone except the government was ready to certain changes. Some big structural changes are not properly done and there is not enough care taken of parallel practices of states in transition. The new procedure of debt collection in Serbia is done with an intention to make debtors pay more easily. Unfortunately on the end we see that the system does not work perfectly since the state itself has some problems of getting its tax money collected. In every aspect of life we see a big influence of politics to the economy, some would say that there is no economy without being involved in politics. This unfortunate situation is following Serbia and many Western Balkan countries for a long period of time. It is hard to expect economic development with such a bad attitude which is somehow always proved in practice. The redistribution of wealth is also problematic, having in mind that the tax policy serves only as a tool to fill the budget which is anyway not just in the sense of just redistribution. The budget of Serbia has many loopholes and certainly the current economic development is not ready to support it. There is a clear need to adjust politics to economy and make the state treat better the hand which is feeding it.

GosperMap: Using a Gosper Curve for Laying Out Hierarchical Data

The emergence of very large hierarchies that result from the increase in available data raises many problems of visualization and navigation. On data sets of such scale, classical graph drawing methods do not take advantage of certain human cognitive skills such as shape recognition. These cognitive skills could make it easier to remember the global structure of the data. In this paper, we propose a method that is based on the use of nested irregular shapes. We name it GosperMap as we rely on the use of a Gosper Curve to generate these shapes. By employing human perception mechanisms that were developed by handling, for example, cartographic maps, this technique facilitates the visualization and navigation of a hierarchy. An algorithm has been designed to preserve region containment according to the hierarchy and to set the leaves' sizes proportionally to a property, in such a way that the size of nonleaf regions corresponds to the sum of their children's sizes. Moreover, the input ordering of the hierarchy's nodes is preserved, i.e., the areas that represent two consecutive children of a node in the hierarchy are adjacent to one another. This property is especially useful because it guarantees some stability in our algorithm. We illustrate our technique by providing visualization examples of the repartition of tax money in the US over time. Furthermore, we validate the use of the GosperMap in a professional documentation context and show the stability and ease of memorization for this type of map.

Establishing The Link Between Money Laundering And Tax Evasion

No clear link has yet been made between tax evasion and money laundering although many (or all) of the professionals in this field may have already assumed the relation. The aim of the research that was conducted for the purposes of this article was to explore whether there is a clear link between tax evasion and money laundering. This was done by studying the relevant literature available on both subjects. The findings, that there is a clear link between these two offences, were confirmed not only by analyzing definitions but also, and most importantly, by an overview of court cases and the judgments made in these court cases. In theory, the results have proven that one cannot look at money laundering without considering tax evasion as well but tax evasion does not necessarily constitute the act of money laundering. This is of value to the individuals and organizations working in the field of taxation and organized crime, because when prosecuting a perpetrator on a count of money laundering, by adding the charge of tax evasion to his or her charge sheet, it can strengthen the case against the accused.