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on Accounting and Auditing |
| By: | Joel Fried (University of Western Ontario) |
| Abstract: | An analysis of the governance policies of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) is undertaken in light of that institution's drive to improve governance practices in the private sector. It turns out that the Commission itself does not practice many of the governance practices required and/or advocated for the corporate sector. Furthermore it is argued that governance policies necessary to resolve the principal - agent problem for the corporate sector are necessary to resolve that problem for a public sector regulator, but they are not sufficient. This is the result of the greater difficulty in monitoring the regulator because the objectives of the principals/electorate are more difficult to measure than profits, and those objectives are only loosely correlated with cash flows. The insistence on publicly available cost-benefit analyses for new and existing OSC initiatives is one method to improve monitoring. |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwo:epuwoc:20056&r=acc |
| By: | Lindsay M. Tedds |
| Abstract: | We investigate firm tax noncompliance using a survey of firms from around the world. Overall, we find that small firms are less and large firms are more compliant. Foreign owned firms, exporters and firms that have audited finance statements are also more compliant, as found by others, but, quite surprisingly, government ownership is insignificant. Not surprisingly, organized crime, high taxes, and government corruption all result in lower compliance. Finally, we find that firms around the world engage in tax noncompliance but, holding all else constant, compliance in highest in OECD countries and the lowest in Latin American, African & Middle Eastern countries. |
| Keywords: | Underground Economy, Tax Noncompliance, Firm Characteristics, Interval Regression |
| JEL: | C24 D21 O17 |
| Date: | 2005–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mcm:deptwp:2005-01&r=acc |
| By: | François Bourguignon; Amedeo Spadaro |
| Abstract: | This paper inverts the usual logic of applied optimal income taxation. It starts from the observed distribution of income before and after redistribution and corresponding marginal tax rates. Under a set of simplifying assumptions, it is then possible to recover the social welfare function that would make the observed marginal tax rate schedule optimal. In this framework, the issue of the optimality of an existing tax-benefit system is transformed into the issue of the shape of the social welfare function associated with that system and whether it satisfies elementary properties. This method is applied to the French redistribution system with the interesting implication that the French redistribution authority either has a rather low estimate of the labor supply elasticity or does not give positive social weights to the richest tax payers. |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pse:psecon:2005-22&r=acc |