Return on assets in the Tobacco Industry analysis of the four main Tobacco Manufacturers

This paper studies operating profitability drivers in the Four Main Tobacco Manufacturers for the period 2004-2014. The operating profitability is analyzed as return on assets (ROA) based on the DuPont Extended Model breakdown in degree of operational risk, gross sales margin and assets turnover. The sources of ROA are market share and price strategies appraised through the drivers: firm-size, global value and strategic choices. Using consolidated data, results suggest that firm-size and global value holds a positive relationship with ROA. Also innovation through less harmful tobacco products can lead to better ROA despite no correlation between R&D and ROA.

Tax compliance and tax complexity in Portugal: essays on the perception of tax professionals

Tese de Doutoramento em Contabilidade.

The private and fiscal returns to schooling and the effect of public policies on private incentives to invest in education: a general framework and some results for the EU

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for the quantitative analysis of the private and fiscal returns to schooling and of the effect of public policies on private incentives to invest in education. This framework is applied to 14 member states of the European Union. For each of these countries, we construct estimates of the private return to an additional year of schooling for an individual of average attainment, taking into account the effects of education on wages and employment probabilities after allowing for academic failure rates, the direct and opportunity costs of schooling, and the impact of personal taxes, social security contributions and unemployment and pension benefits on net incomes. We also construct a set of effective tax and subsidy rates that measure the effects of different public policies on the private returns to education, and measures of the fiscal returns to schooling that capture the long-term effects of a marginal increase in attainment on public finances under c

Human capital in a global and knowledge-based economy. Part 2. Asssessment at the EU country level.

This report is an extension and partial update of de la Fuente and Ciccone (2002). It constructs estimates of the private and social rates of return on schooling for fourteen EU countries using microeconometric estimates of Mincerian wage equations, the results of cross-country growth regressions and OECD data on educational expenditures, tax rates and social benefits. The results are used to draw some tentative conclusions regarding the optimality of observed investment patterns and educational subsidy levels.

On the relation between tax rates and evasion in a multi-period economy

We extend the basic tax evasion model to a multi-period economy exhibiting sustained growth. When individuals conceal part of their true income from the tax authority, they face the risk of being audited and hence of paying the corresponding fine. Both taxes and fines determine individual saving and the rate of capital accumulation. In this context we show that the sign of the relation between the level of the tax rate and the amount of evaded income is the same as that obtained in static setups. Moreover, high tax rates on income are typically associated with low growth rates as occurs in standard growth models that disregard the tax evasion phenomenon.

Settlement in tax evasion prosecution

It is often argued that even if optimal ex-post, settlement dilutes deterrence ex-ante. We analyze the interest for the tax authority of committing, ex-ante, to a settlement strategy. We show that to commit to the use of settlements is ex-ante optimal when the tax authority receives signals that provide statistical information about the taxpayers' true tax liability. The more informative the signal, the larger the additional expected evenue raised by the tax authority when using settlement as a policy tool.

Not all university degrees yield the same return: private and social returns to higher education for males in Spain

In this paper we use micro data from the Spanish Family Expenditure Survey for 1990 to estimate, for the first time, the private and social rates of return of different university degrees in Spain. We compute internal rates of return and include investment on higher education financed by the public purse to estimate social rates of return. Our main finding is that, as presumed, there is large heterogeneity in rates of return amongst different university

The Proposals for a European tax on CO2 and their implications for intercountry distribution

This paper analyzes the advantages and implications of the implementation of a European tax on carbon dioxide emissions as an own resource of the European Union. In contrast to a harmonized tax, which would only have distributive effects within each member state, a tax collected at European scale would also have important distributive effects among different countries. These effects would also depend on the use of tax revenues. The paper investigates the distributive effects among the member states of three tax models: a pure CO2

The Private and fiscal returns to schooling and the effect of public policies on private incentives to invest in education: a general framework and some results for the EU

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for the quantitative analysis of the private and fiscal returns to schooling and of the effect of public policies on private incentives to invest in education. This framework is applied to 14 member states of the European Union. For each of these countries, we construct estimates of the private return to an additional year of schooling for an individual of average attainment, taking into account the effects of education on wages and employment probabilities after allowing for academic failure rates, the direct and opportunity costs of schooling, and the impact of personal taxes, social security contributions and unemployment and pension benefits on net incomes. We also construct a set of effective tax and subsidy rates that measure the effects of different public policies on the private returns to education, and measures of the fiscal returns to schooling that capture the long-term effects of a marginal increase in attainment on public finances under conditions that approximate general equilibrium.

Optimized venous return with a self-expanding cannula: from computational fluid dynamics to clinical application.

The Smart canula concept allows for collapsed cannula insertion, and self-expansion within a vein of the body. (A) Computational fluid dynamics, and (B) bovine experiments (76+/-3.8 kg) were performed for comparative analyses, prior to (C) the first clinical application. For an 18F access, a given flow of 4 l/min (A) resulted in a pressure drop of 49 mmHg for smart cannula versus 140 mmHg for control. The corresponding Reynolds numbers are 680 versus 1170, respectively. (B) For an access of 28F, the maximal flow for smart cannula was 5.8+/-0.5 l/min versus 4.0+/-0.1 l/min for standard (P<0.0001), for 24F 5.5+/-0.6 l/min versus 3.2+/-0.4 l/min (P<0.0001), and for 20F 4.1+/-0.3 l/min versus 1.6+/-0.3 l/min (P<0.0001). The flow obtained with the smart cannula was 270+/-45% (20F), 172+/-26% (24F), and 134+/-13% (28F) of standard (one-way ANOVA, P=0.014). (C) First clinical application (1.42 m2) with a smart cannula showed 3.55 l/min (100% predicted) without additional fluids. All three assessment steps confirm the superior performance of the smart cannula design.

Tax differentials and agglomeration economies in intraregional firm location

This paper analyses empirically how differences in local taxes affect the intraregional location of new manufacturing plants. These effects are examined within the random profit maximization framework while accounting for the presence of different types of agglomeration economies (localization/ urbanization/ Jacobs’ economies) at the municipal level. We look at the location decision of more than 10,000 establishments locating between 1996 and 2003 across more than 400 municipalities in Catalonia, a Spanish region. It is necessary to restrict the choice set to the local labor market and, above all, to control for agglomeration economies so as to identify the effects of taxes on the location of new establishments.

An empirical analysis of wealth taxation: equity Vs.tax compliance

Capital taxation is currently under debate, basically due to problems of administrative control and proper assessment of the levied assets. We analyze both problems focusing on a capital tax, the annual wealth tax (WT), which is only applied in five OECD countries, being Spain one of them. We concentrate our analysis on top 1% adult population, which permits us to describe the evolution of wealth concentration in Spain along 1983-2001. On average top 1% holds about 18% of total wealth, which rises to 19% when tax incompliance and under-assessment is corrected for housing, the main asset. The evolution suggests wealth concentration has risen. Regarding WT, we analyze whether it helps to reduce wealth inequality or, on the contrary, it reinforces vertical inequity (due to especial concessions) and horizontal inequity (due to the de iure and to de facto different treatment of assets). We analyze in detail housing and equity shares. By means of a time series analysis, we relate the reported values with reasonable price indicators and proxies of the propensity to save. We infer net tax compliance is extremely low, which includes both what we commonly understand by (gross) tax compliance and the degree of under-assessment due to fiscal legislation (for housing). That is especially true for housing, whose level of net tax compliance is well below 50%. Hence, we corroborate the difficulties in taxing capital, and so cast doubts on the current role of the WT in Spain in reducing wealth inequality.

Changes in the demand for private medical insurance following a shift in tax incentives

The 1998 Spanish reform of the Personal Income Tax eliminated the 15% deduction for private medical expenditures including payments on private health insurance (PHI) policies. To avoid an undesirable increase in the demand for publicly funded health care, tax incentives to buy PHI were not completely removed but basically shifted from individual to group employer-paid policies. In a unique fiscal experiment, at the same time that the tax relief for individually purchased policies was abolished, the government provided for tax allowances on policies taken out through employment. Using a bivariate probit model on data from National Health Surveys, we estimate the impact of said reform on the demand for PHI and the changes occurred within it. Our findings suggest that the total probability of buying PHI was not significantly affected. Indeed, the fall in the demand for individual policies (by 10% between 1997 and 2001) was offset by an increase in the demand for group employer-paid ones, so that the overall size of the market remained virtually unchanged. We also briefly discuss the welfare effects on the state budget, the industry and society at large.

Multinational Firms’ Heterogeneity in Tax Responsiveness: the Role of Transfer Pricing

In this paper we show that the ability of multinational firms to manipulate transfer prices affects the tax sensitivity of foreign direct investment (FDI). We offer a model of international capital allocation where firms are heterogeneous in their ability to manipulate transfer prices. Perhaps paradoxically, we show that the ability to shift profits can make parent companies' investment more sensitive to host-country tax rates, as long as investors expect fisscal authorities to use price and profit detection methods. We then offer a comprehensive empirical study to test our predictions in the case of Japanese FDI. We exploit the finding that the unobservable ability to manipulate transfer prices is correlated with whole ownership of a±liates and R&D expenditure. Based on country, parent firm and sector characteristics, we estimate an investment equation on a sample of 3614 Japanese affiliates in 49 emerging countries. We obtain a greater semi-elasticity of investment to the statutory tax rate in a±liates that are wholly-owned and that have R&D intensive parents. We interpret these results as indirect evidence that abusive transfer pricing is one of the determinants of FDI activity.

Tax Structure, Growth and Welfare in the UK

This paper studies the quantitative implications of changes in the composition of taxes for long-run growth and expected lifetime utility in the UK economy over 1970-2005. Our setup is a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model incorporating a detailed scal policy struc- ture, and where the engine of endogenous growth is human capital accumulation. The government s spending instruments include pub- lic consumption, investment and education spending. On the revenue side, labour, capital and consumption taxes are employed. Our results suggest that if the goal of tax policy is to promote long-run growth by altering relative tax rates, then it should reduce labour taxes while simultaneously increasing capital or consumption taxes to make up for the loss in labour tax revenue. In contrast, a welfare promoting policy would be to cut capital taxes, while concurrently increasing labour or consumption taxes to make up for the loss in capital tax revenue.