Lynne Oats

Innovation and pragmatism in tax design: Excess Profits Duty in the UK during the First World War

In this article, we examine the design and administration of Excess Profits Duty (EPD), introduced in the UK in 1915. This represented a significant innovation as the countrys first comprehensive attempt to tax ‘excessive’ business profits. EPD was a complex tax which had two objectives: to generate additional revenues to help fund dramatically increased wartime government expenditure and to curb ‘profiteering’. Although criticised on numerous grounds, we argue that the tax was surprisingly successful. For all its defects, it generated very substantial revenues, and its design and administration proved flexible and robust in coping with the uncertainties of war.

King John's Tax Innovations - Extortion, Resistance, and the Establishment of the Principle of Taxation by Consent

The purpose of this paper is to present a re-evaluation of the reign of Englands King John (1199–1216) from a fiscal perspective. The paper seeks to explain Johns innovations in terms of widening the scope and severity of tax assessment and revenue collection. In particular, the paper seeks to highlight the significance of Hubert Walter as the kings financial adviser. He exercised a moderating influence in the first half of Johns reign and was the guiding hand in the successful introduction of innovative measures designed to increase revenues. These became extreme after his death in 1205, when John lacked his counsel. It is further suggested that the Magna Carta was a direct reaction to such financial severity. Many of the clauses in Magna Carta refer specifically to Johns tax innovations and severity. Linked to this, the paper argues that these events were critical to the establishment of the principle of taxation by consent. As a result of the innovative and extreme nature of Johns fiscal measures...

POLITICAL SUPPRESSION OR REVENUE RAISING? TAXING NEWSPAPERS DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WAR

In 1797 the Prime Minister of Great Britain announced a substantial increase in the stamp duty on newspapers. This increase, and indeed the tax itself, has been variously represented as an attack o...

Distinguishing closely held companies for taxation purposes: The Australian experience 1930-1972

Early in the life of Australias income tax, the government, sensitive to loss of taxation revenue through artificial arrangements to divert taxable profits from individuals to companies where they would be taxed more lightly, saw fit to provide a special taxation regime for closely held companies. From the first attempts by the government to distinguish closely held companies for tax purposes in 1930, until the final legislative changes in 1972, there arose a highly unsatisfactory situation in which taxpayers sought, through increasingly artificial means, to subvert the legislative purpose with the aim of tax avoidance. The governments response throughout was inadequate in a number of respects, and fuelled the fires of tax avoidance through inept drafting of the relevant legislation and delayed treatment of perceived abuses by taxpayers.Early in the life of Australias income tax, the government, sensitive to loss of taxation revenue through artificial arrangements to divert taxable profits from individuals to companies where they would be taxed more lightly, saw fit to provide a special taxation regime for closely held companies. From the first attempts by the government to distinguish closely held companies for tax purposes in 1930, until the final legislative changes in 1972, there arose a highly unsatisfactory situation in which taxpayers sought, through increasingly artificial means, to subvert the legislative purpose with the aim of tax avoidance. The governments response throughout was inadequate in a number of respects, and fuelled the fires of tax avoidance through inept drafting of the relevant legislation and delayed treatment of perceived abuses by taxpayers.

Accounting for the stamp act crisis

In 1765, the British Parliament imposed stamp duties on the American colonies, setting in motion the chain of events which ultimately led to the American Revolution. This paper analyzes the practicalities of the Stamp Act to provide insights into the way in which a tax instrument that was successful in one setting failed to achieve similar success in another. The reasons for choosing stamp duties as an appropriate fiscal measure, the colonial reaction to the tax, and the way in which the tax was accounted for by the British government bureaucracy are examined. The paper demonstrates the value of using an accounting lens to provide a more nuanced interpretation of the Stamp Act crisis.

Tax Talk: An Exploration of Online Discussions Among Taxpayers

We present an analysis of over 400 comments about complying with tax obligations extracted from online discussion forums for freelancers. While the topics investigated by much of the literature on taxpayer behaviour are theory driven, we aimed to explore the universe of online discussions about tax in order to extract those topics that are most relevant to taxpayers. The forum discussions were subjected to a qualitative thematic analysis, and we present a model of the ‘universe’ of tax as reflected in taxpayer discussions. The model comprises several main actors (tax laws, tax authority, tax practitioners, and the taxpayer’s social network) and describes the multiple ways in which they relate to taxpayers’ behaviour. We also conduct a more focused analysis to show that the majority of taxpayers seem unconcerned with many of the variables that have been the focus of tax behaviour research (e.g. audits, penalties, etc.), and that most people are motivated to be compliant and are more concerned with how to comply than whether to comply. Moreover, we discuss how these ‘real-world’ tax discussions question common assumptions in the study of tax behaviour and how they inform our understanding of business ethics more generally.

The Dynamics of Internalised and Extrinsic Motivation in the Ethical Decision-Making of Small Business Owners: DYNAMICS OF INTERNALISED AND EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION

This work was conducted in the Tax Administration Research Centre at the University of Exeter, jointly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, HM Revenue & Customs and HM Treasury (grant no. ES/K005944/1); we are very grateful to our funders for their support.