Chosen Activities Relating to Tax Administration The subject-matter of this thesis is legislation of activities relating to tax administration, specifically mostly tax inspection and procedure to remove doubt. On 1st January 2011 the tax code took legal effect and it regulates these activities in more details than it was in the administration of taxes act. The goal of this diploma thesis was to describe and analyze current legislation of these institutes, to mention the reasons of creation of this regulation, to point out the gaps which appear in tax code and to suggest their possible solutions. This thesis also deals with jurisprudence, both older but still usable and newer gradually occurring jurisprudence regarding new tax code. The first chapter deals with the tax administration in general. It describes the historical development of tax administration, focuses on the scope and purpose of the tax administration and then analyzes fundamental principles of tax administration. The tax administrator and persons participating in tax procedure have to respect these principles during activities relating to tax administration, too. The second chapter deals with activities relating to tax administration. First, the terms of proceedings, activities and acts are defined then I focused on common features of...

This research critically investigates the adoption and implementation of transfer pricing regulations in Nigeria with a particular emphasis on the petroleum sector. It opportunely chose Nigeria as a case study of transfer pricing issues in developing countries as Nigeria was devising and implementing its own transfer pricing regulation. In early 2012, Nigeria issued draft transfer pricing regulations for consultation with a view to publishing them at the end of the same year. In order to gauge the reaction of the stakeholders in Nigeria to the adoption and implementation of transfer pricing regulations and other related issues, a questionnaire was designed and administered to 140 respondents from eight different stakeholders groups including Nigerian tax authority, multinational companies in the petroleum sector and other organisations involved in tax matters. The questionnaire elicited their views on the (i) form of adoption of transfer pricing regulations; (ii) motive behind the adoption of the regulations; (iii) administrative resource capacity of the Nigerian tax authority; (iv) barriers that might hinder successful implementation of the regulations; and (v) needs for guidance and support. Institutional theory and resource-based view were employed as a theoretical lens through which to guide the study and to provide a platform against which to analyse the responses to the questionnaire and the interviews. The analysis of the responses to the questionnaire was thus undertaken subsequent to the adoption of the transfer pricing system which enabled informed reflection and critical analysis to be carried out on the results of the analysis. In addition, interviews with 16 experts were conducted subsequent to the issue and preliminary analysis of the responses to the questionnaire in order to gauge their reaction to the views being expressed by the respondents. This enabled a reflective analysis to be undertaken when assessing the information content emerging from the responses. The findings of the study indicate that the OECD transfer pricing framework, which is the transfer pricing system of choice amongst the developed countries, is not the most preferred framework for the regulation of transfer pricing in Nigeria. It also reveals that whilst the Nigerian tax authority has the administrative capacity to develop a transfer pricing team and other necessary platforms for the adoption and implementation of transfer pricing regulations, the lack of sufficient transfer pricing experts, political will and inadequate comparable information are the major potential barriers that might hinder the successful implementation of transfer pricing regulations in Nigeria. These findings should enable policy makers and other stakeholders in Nigeria to review their transfer pricing policies and find a way to overcome the identified potential barriers. This thesis is the first of its kind to empirically investigate the transfer pricing regulations in Nigeria with a particular emphasis on the petroleum sector. It also further establishes the use of institutional theory and resource-based view framework in transfer pricing studies and especially, by extending its application to the adoption and implementation of transfer pricing regulations with a particular emphasis on the petroleum sector.

The objective of this study is to obtain an in-depth understanding of the practical working of property tax administration in Jamaica. It highlights the major enforcement and compliance practices along with how the invisible and underlying interactions of actors in the field shape these practices. It also explores those issues and circumstances along with the existing patterns of interests which have contributed to the continued practice of the central administration of the property tax. The study also emphasizes struggles in the property tax field between the various players: the tax authority, the politicians, the developers, the local authorities, the central government and the taxpayers and how each one uses its capital to maintain or dominate its position within the property tax field. The findings revealed that there were various tensions and struggles among the different players within property tax field in Jamaica. The players in the field used their ‘capitals’ to maintain, dominate and or attempt to make changes to the property tax rules. The findings suggest that some property tax enforcement practices were the means through which these tensions were manifested and resolved or on the other hand, the tax authority attempted to use the current practices as hidden agendas to highlight those tensions in order to stand their ground or obliquely suggest changes or even to demonstrate its tacit support of government policies. The findings also suggest that the non-localization of the property tax may be due to varied political interests, mistrust in the local authorities and also the perception by some players that there’s a lack of capital at the local level to manage the tax. Finally, taxpayers’ used their social, economic and cultural capital to resist enforcement and compliance efforts cheating the government of much needed revenues Property tax although not an important national tax is a critical source of revenue for local communities globally. An increased understanding of the working of the practices is beneficial and has implications for both taxpayers and policymakers. The three research questions posed in my study address and highlight the main property tax enforcement strategies and how the tax authority and policymakers use their capital to shape these practices; the extent to which non-localization of the property tax within the Portmore Municipality is influenced by the political dispositions of the players in the field and thirdly the dimensions of property tax compliance and non-compliance in Jamaica. The questions seek to demonstrate how the combination of the actions and interactions of tax administrators, taxpayers, politicians, developers, government bureaucrats reshape administrative practices in the property tax field which have implications for revenue generation and the provision of services. In keeping with the adoption of an interpretive inductive approach, face-to-face interviews were conducted with tax administrators, policymakers, councillors, mayors, taxpayers, members of civil society, a developer and a tax professional. A theoretical framework is created which combines the major themes and theoretical concepts within three strands of literature: tax administration, fiscal decentralization, and Bourdieu’s theory of practice. The structure provides the explanatory lens through which the findings are presented and interpreted. The study contributes to the tax scholarship through an interpretive methodical approach which gives an additional perspective on property tax administration. It answers the call for well-developed tax research dispelling the notion that tax research is adequately dealt with. This study contributes to the tax literature by demonstrating that taxation isn’t just a technical issue; that the legal framework and administrative framework don’t necessarily coincide with practice; that tax practice is shaped by the actions and interactions of players in the field, making it a social construction; that players use their power to influence property tax practice and that players actions are conditioned by their background. The study also contributes a conceptual framework for property tax practice.

Taxes are major source of public funds to finance government expenditures. Tax authorities impose different kind of taxes and employ many agents to collect taxes effectively. Some dutiful taxpayers will undoubtedly pay their tax liabilities while many others will not. The Internal Revenue Service in the United States reports that the estimate of income tax liability not collected is about 17, which translates into 345 billion for 2001. It is important to make a distinction between tax evasion and tax avoidance. The distinguishing characteristic of evasion is illegality. Whether the reason for not paying tax liability is avoidance or evasion, economic models of taxation need to be changed in the light of these realities. In this study, I analyze some of the economic problems of tax evasion/avoidance. In the first chapter, I discuss the relationship between number of tax audits, tax administration reform and tax compliance in Turkey. In recent years, many developing countries have carried out reforms in their tax administration to increase their efficiency in collecting taxes. In 2005, the tax authority in Turkey established Tax Office Directorates (T.O.D.s) in 29 provinces for the purpose of controlling the underground economy, improving taxpayer assistance, and increasing auditing efficiency. By using the panel data on province level tax returns, my analysis answers two questions. First, I examine the effect of audits on reported income and reported tax liability. By controlling for the detectibility of evasion and other socioeconomic variables, I find that audits have the same effectiveness in increasing reported income and reported tax liability. Second, I investigate the effect of establishing T.O.D.s in 29 provinces on compliance in those provinces. I find that T.O.D.s are effective at the extensive margin rather than the intensive margin. Thus, establishing T.O.D.s had no significant effect on the compliance level of existing taxpayers while it increased the number of tax returns significantly. In the second chapter, I analyze the excess burden on income tax when tax avoidance matters. I present a simple static labor supply model with endogenous asset choice. Then, I examine how tax avoidance through asset trading a ects the labor supply response and the excess burden of income tax. Furthermore, I discuss the implications of the tax policy analysis and show that a failure to account for avoidance responses may lead to errors when estimating how tax reform affects labor supply, tax revenue, and the welfare cost of taxation. Because of tax avoidance through tax arbitrage, the progressivity of a given tax system will be less than what the formal tax system implies. In the third chapter,we study the Marginal Cost of Funds in the existence of tax evasion. We develop a general equilibrium model of tax evasion, including the expected utility of taxpayers and three different revenue-raising government policies. In this rich model environment, we analytically derive the marginal cost of funds (MCF) for the alternative policy instruments. We consider two main fiscal reforms: the revision in the nonlinear tax scheme and the changes in enforcement mechanism (the audit and penalty rates). First, we derive the MCF for the tax reform and find its key determinants. The derived MCF is greater than the previous ones since it includes a "risk-bearing cost" as well as tax distortion. The reform in enforcement mechanism generates MCFs in different forms. Two more MCFs with respect to audit and penalty rates are presented. Finally, we compare these three different MCFs in numerical example and provide some policy implications. / text

The primary objective of this dissertation was to identify and estimate the relative importance of factors used by the Tax Court in deciding hobby loss cases. This was accomplished in two steps. The first step was to review the Treasury Regulations, cases and literature pertaining to hobby losses to determine the relevant factors used by the Court in deciding this issue. The second step involved using probit analysis to identify which of these factors actually influenced the Court in deciding hobby loss cases and to determine the relative importance of the factors. A secondary purpose was to to explore the probit model's ability to predict decisions likely to be appealed. The probit model was based on the analysis of 219 post-1954 Tax Court cases involving determination of whether activities were or were not engaged in for profit. By application of log-likelihood techniques, it was determined that the model developed was stable over time and across lines of "business," the implication being that cases decided both before and after the passage of Section 183 and involving all types of activity should have precedential value in conflicts between taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service. Five factors were found to be significant predictors: manner of operation, level of expertise, time expended, history of income and loss, and presence of elements of personal pleasure. It is important to note that the two factors not susceptible to tax planning--success in other activities and financial status of the taxpayer--were insignificant discriminators between business and hobby outcomes. The implication is that with careful tax planning, one can organize and operate a given activity so that it is likely to receive favorable tax treatment. The probit model proved to be unable to predict decisions likely to be appealed. The probability that a particular case would be classified by the Court as a business did not appear to be a significant predictor of whether a taxpayer would appeal an adverse decision.

Cette thèse se donne pour objet d’analyser les rapports entre la conception et l’introduction des nouveaux outils informatiques qui essayent de faire la gestion intégrée de l'information dans une organisation et les transformations simultanées de la structure et des pratiques organisationnelles.Le propos du travail est de comprendre comment les interactions entre la dynamique interne des organisations et les évolutions technologiques contribuent à l’évolution des organisations, à partir de l’hypothèse de que bien qu’essentiels pour faire évoluer l’organisation, les nouveaux outils informatiques sont, eux aussi, lors de leur conception, des produits des rapports sociaux des acteurs qui participent à la vie de l’organisation. Le moment de conception des outils informatiques introduits dans une organisation est, ainsi, l’occasion de la confrontation de visions de l’organisation qui peuvent être sinon opposées au moins diverses, et où des rapports biunivoques s’établissent entre l’élaboration et l’adoption des nouveaux outils techniques et la construction de nouveaux modèles d’organisation des services. L’analyse conjointe des projets de changement technique et organisationnel menés à partir de la fin des années 1990 dans l’administration fiscale française permet de rompre le divorce entre la centralité pratique des changements dans le champ de l’administration liés aux TIC et aux systèmes d’information et la marginalité ou même la complète absence de ces sujets dans la littérature qui analyse les changements du secteur public. Dans ces projets, la nouvelle façon par laquelle l’administration fiscale se propose d’orienter ses rapports avec les contribuables est à l’origine des nouveaux flux d’informations, de la nouvelle logique qui va orienter la gestion de l’information et de la révision des processus internes de l’organisation. / Pas de résumé en anglais

The subject of this thesis is to analyze changes in tax administration, the OECD member countries, which have occurred in relation to the tax reforms undertaken in the period 2005 - 2009. These changes are further examined and analyzed according to the phases of the business to which it relates. The main task of this work is the comparison of statistical methods and analysis of tax reforms in terms of tax administration and complexity of tax administration in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The conclusion is based on the results confirmed or refuted the hypothesis of the development cost of the tax administration and rate of the application and use of information technology.

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / This research focuses on the challenges of tax administration in Somaliland Ministry of Finance (MOF). The study analyses existing challenges in the MOF-Tax Administration, causes of these challenges, the impact of these challenges on domestic revenue collection as well as the country’s economic growth and development. In order to obtain a desirable, comprehensive, and in-depth understanding of the research problem, the researcher applied a mixed method approach, thereby limiting the weaknesses of using the quantitative or qualitative research approach alone. The sample size consisted of 63 staff members. The research included 57 questionnaires for 57 employees and lower level managers as well as 6 interviews for top and middle-level managers in Somaliland Inland Revenue Department. The data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), Ms. Excel, and conceptual analysis, where themes were developed and analyzed. The key findings of the research were that Somaliland tax administration faces immense challenges that can be broadly grouped into three categories: institutional challenges, attitudinal challenges as well as political and economic challenges. These challenges are mainly due to the absence of professional staff, the lack of taxpayers’ education, outdated tax laws, non-compliance behavior of taxpayers, rigidity of the tax system, and poor public trust amongst others. These challenges restrained tax revenue collection, public service provision, investments, and economic growth issues. Therefore, the recommendations, accordingly made in this thesis, include, amongst others, the need to establishing a professional training center for staff, automating tax procedure, implementing effective performance appraisal system, and the regular updating of tax policies to establish a transparent, accountable and equitable tax system in Somaliland.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce (specialising in Taxation) 13 April 2017 / ‘The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), is designed to prevent multinational businesses achieving nontaxation on profits or artificially shifting profits across borders to exploit lower corporate income tax rates’ (KPMG, 2014, p 5). ‘The OECD’s BEPS Action Plan, launched in July of 2013 and endorsed by the G20, included 15 key areas for identifying and curbing aggressive tax planning and practices and modernizing the international tax system’ (KPMG, 2013). It can be argued that the aim of the ‘OECD Action Plan on BEPS’ is to make provision for G20 countries, OECD countries and all other interested stakeholders to come together on an equal footing to inter alia develop new international tax rules. One of the key focus areas of the ‘OECD Action Plan on BEPS’, is ‘Preventing the Artificial Avoidance of Permanent Establishment Status - Action 7'. ‘The aim of Action 7 is to develop changes to the definition of a permanent establishment (PE) to prevent abuses of that threshold, including through the use of commissionaire arrangements and the specific activity exemptions to avoid PE status where core activities are involved’ (KPMG, 2015, p 14). The technical arguments to be argued for the purposes of this research report will inter alia involve commenting on commissionaire arrangements and how such arrangements have been problematic for international tax rules in their current form. In addressing the problems inherent in the definition of a PE, ‘Preventing the Artificial Avoidance of Permanent Establishment Status - Action 7' specifically proposes changes to Articles 5(5) and 5(6) of the ‘OECD Model Tax Convention’ which seek to revamp the dependent agent rule. The specific activity exceptions in Article 5(4) have also been further clarified in the OECD commentary on the ‘OECD Model Tax Convention’ through the inclusion of an explanation of the activities that will be considered as being preparatory or auxiliary in nature, as well as supporting examples which help illustrate the meaning of the said terms. ii In addition, the PE rule for construction projects set out in Article 5(3) will now include a principal purposes test, as well the addition of an example illustrating the application of the principal purposes test in the OECD commentary on the ‘OECD Model Tax Convention’ dealing with Article 5(3). ‘On 5 October 2015, the OECD issued a final package of reports in connection with its Action Plan to address BEPS, as well as a plan for follow-up work and a timetable for implementation. Many countries have already adopted or are poised to adopt changes to their international tax systems based on the OECD recommendations. While implementation and timing will vary across borders, this final OECD release marks a crucial shift from the recommendation and consultation phase of BEPS to legislation and implementation’ (KPMG, 2015, p 2). Key Words: ‘Action 7’, Article 5, ‘BEPS Action Plan’, Commissionaire Arrangements, Dependent Agent, Multinational Enterprises, ‘OECD Model Tax Convention’, PE. / GR2018

The tax audit can be defined as one of the practices of the tax authorities modified by Act No. 280/2009 Coll., the Tax Code. The aim of the tax audit corresponds with the basic aim of the tax administration, which is primarily to establish correctly a tax assessment. This dissertation is focused on the tax audit from the perspective of the fundamental tax administration principles. The presented dissertation is divided into nine chapters, most of which are further subdivided. The first chapter is focused on the determination of the tax audit. In the second chapter, the attention is paid to the constitutional principles controlling the tax audit, mainly to selected regulations of the Constitution and the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. The following third chapter is focused on the isuue of good governance principles. The fourth chapter deals with the fundamental principles of tax administration, as expressed in the Tax Code in §5 - §9. These principles are specified as a basis for the next part of the work. Chapters five to eight are dedicated to the tax audit, which is divided into the beginning of the tax audit, the tax rights and responsibilities during the tax audit, the progress of the tax audit and the final chapter is focused on completion of the tax audit. The last chapter is...