This brief offers a broad, yet concise, coverage of portfolio choice, containing both application-oriented and academic results, along with abundant pointers to the literature for further study. It cuts through many strands of the subject, presenting not only the classical results from financial economics but also approaches originating from information theory, machine learning and operations research. This compact treatment of the topic will be valuable to students entering the field, as well as practitioners looking for a broad coverage of the topic.
In the early 1990s, lawyer Beth Symes brought an equality challenge against the Canadian Income Tax Act, arguing that her childcare costs were a business expense. The case ignited public controversy. Was Symes disadvantaged on the basis of gender, or unfairly privileged on the basis of class? This book seeks answers to those questions through close attention to the Symes case, where class and gender interests clashed over the tax treatment of childcare. It looks at the history of legislative and litigative struggles, the dynamics of courtroom discourse, and the influence of broad social debates about children and the public/private divide. It reveals how frequently the rhetoric of choice, responsibility, and selfishness is invoked in response to women's attempts to place issues of childcare on the public agenda. Taxing Choices will interest all those who seek to use the law as a tool of social justice but are troubled by the perils posed by competing interests and conflicts involving race, class, gender, and ability.
First published in 1999, this volume responds to the system of corporate taxation in the UK and aims to develop mathematical programming models which determine the optimum combination of investment decisions and financing methods for capital budgeting on a post-tax basis, incorporating specific important areas not previously examined in the literature. Suzanne Farrar also aims to achieve operational experience of these models, in order to gain insights into the impact of taxation on project appraisal in complex situations where several potentially distorting tax effects operate simultaneously, and the general practical feasibility of operational use. Beginning with capital investment and the UK Corporate Tax System, Farrar moves onto capital investment appraisal, tax and optimal financing, optimisation models in capital budgeting, the mathematical programming model and operational use of that model.
Taxing behavior deemed "politically incorrect" has long been a convenient way for politicians to fund programs benefiting special interest groups, to the public's disadvantage. Government policy toward various goods - drugs, tobacco and alcohol, for example - has been locked into a regulatory cycle of tax and taboo. Support for legalizing other substances is buttressed by the revenue-generating power of so-called "sin" taxesi And the products subjected to excise taxation have varied from soft drinks, fishing gear and margarine to airline tickets, telephone calls and gasoline. Taxing Choice thoroughly addresses the costs and benefits of these predatory public policies.Shughart notes that the record of such punitive selective taxation has been anything but successful, hindering economic progress and failing to deliver the promised social benefits. In addition, the costs of selective taxes fall disproportionately on lower-income people, while more politically powerful interest groups benefit. At the same time, such policies are a poor way to raise funding for public services, and foster political corruption and self-serving bureaucracies accountable to no one. Indeed, policies discriminating against certain products may represent ominous trends easily extended into virtually every facet of people's lives. One can envision policies proscribing foods, sun bathing, obesity, and even books, films, and political and religious beliefs deemed "dangerous."Part I is devoted to the political economy of selective taxation. Contributors trace the history and politics of selective excise taxes in the United States, discussing the range of products that have been subject to such taxation from the founding period to the present. Part II explains how these taxes emerge in a political marketplace with opposing pressure groups scrambling for wealth transfers in their own favor. Part III looks at taxes on specific products as well as such banning policies as Prohibition and the war on drugs. Constitutional, economic, and civil liberty issues, including civil asset forfeiture and product liability, are discussed in Part IV. With the accelerating national debate over tax reform and the downsizing of government, Taxing Choice is a timely and far-reaching contribution to a debate of great interest to economists, policymakers, historians, sociologists, and taxpayers in general.
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