First systematic study of Chinese taxation, applying novel legal and economic analyses - an essential reference on the subject.

To some extent, because of his overlapping careers in academia and politics, the renowned tax scholar Peter Essers is known for his influential insight that ‘the effects of taxation on the political balance of power, and vice versa, are always interlinked with other phenomena, such as wars, crises, religious developments and inequalities in society’. In this widely ranging festschrift, thirty-six prominent tax scholars from all across Europe examine the legacy of Peter Essers’ research interests, from the larger philosophical, political, and social factors driving tax history to the reality of the taxing State as experienced by taxpayers and tax officials. The book’s outstanding overview of the most relevant technical and policy aspects of European and international taxation includes deeply thoughtful chapters on such topics and issues as the following: developing sustainable corporate tax governance; tax whistleblowing; transfer pricing; balancing qualitative and quantitative approaches to tax research; necessity to reach something close to ‘equal treatment’ between the upper and lower social classes; consent and democracy; tax rebellions; tax evasion and tax avoidance; taxation of cross-border remote workers and their employers; mitigation of double taxation of income earned by entertainers and sportspersons; and the international tax treaty network. More than a homage to this scholar’s far-reaching contributions, this book is remarkable for the variety and academic rigour of the chapters. The understanding its authors provide of both the broad contours and the intricacies of European and international taxation will be of inestimable value to tax practitioners, policymakers, tax consultants, and academics, as well as interested researchers in economics, political science, and sociology.

This book integrates legal, economic, and administrative materials about value added tax. Its principal purpose is to provide comprehensive teaching tools - laws, cases, analytical exercises, and questions drawn from the experience of countries and organizations from all areas of the world. It also serves as a resource for tax practitioners and government officials that must grapple with issues under their VAT or their prospective VAT. The comparative presentation of this volume offers an analysis of policy issues relating to tax structure and tax base as well as insights into how cases arising out of VAT disputes have been resolved. The authors have expanded the coverage to include new VAT related developments in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. A chapter on financial services has been added as well as an analysis of significant new cases.

Leading economic historians present a groundbreaking series of country case studies exploring the formation of fiscal states in Eurasia.

The Nature, the Performance, and the Reform of State-owned Enterprises provides a detailed description of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China with respect to both efficiency and income distribution. It shows that state ownership in the form of SOEs does not use resources efficiently and has a poor record in income distribution. Moreover, SOEs are found to enjoy unfair advantages in their competition with other firms. To illustrate the point, the book presents data revealing how favored policies, monopolistic powers, and subsidies benefit SOEs. These advantages are worth several trillion yuans a year. It is a sad irony that such wealth of the people is used to beef up the revenues of the SOEs, making their accounts look much better than they should be.This book, with its rich empirical data and information, is an authoritative reference for researchers interested in SOEs. It is also a good read for students of social sciences and the public to learn more about SOEs.

In the early twentieth century, the Chinese state made strenuous efforts to broaden and deepen its authority over rural society. This book is an ambitious attempt to offer both a method and a framework for analyzing Chinese social history in the state-making era. The author constructs a prismatic view of village-level society that shows how marketing, kinship, water control, temple patronage, and other structures of human interaction overlapped to form what he calls the cultural nexus of power in local society. The author's concept of the cultural nexus and his tracing of how it was altered enables us for the first time to grapple with change at the village level in all its complexity. The author asserts that the growth of the state transformed and delegitimized the traditional cultural nexus during the Republican era, particularly in the realm of village leadership and finances. Thus, the expansion of state power was ultimately and paradoxically responsible for the revolution in China as it eroded the foundations of village life, leaving nothing in its place. The problems of state-making in China were different from those of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe; the Chinese experience heralds the process that would become increasingly common in the emergent states of the developing world under the very different circumstances of the twentieth century.

How will China reform its economy as it aspires to become the next economic superpower? It's clear that China is the world's next economic superpower. But what isn't so clear is how China will get there by the middle of this century. It now faces tremendous challenges such as fostering innovation, dealing with ageing problem and coping with a less accommodative global environment. In this book, economists from China's leading university and America's best-known think tank offer in depth analyses of these challenges. Does China have enough talent and right policy and institutional mix to transit from input-driven to innovation-driven economy? What does ageing mean, in terms of labor supply, consumption demand and social welfare expenditure? Can China contain the environmental and climate change risks? How should the financial system be transformed in order to continuously support economic growth and keep financial risks under control? What fiscal reforms are required in order to balance between economic efficiency and social harmony? What roles should the state-owned enterprises play in the future Chinese economy? In addition, how will technological competition between the United States and China affect each country's development? Will the Chinese yuan emerge as a major reserve currency, and would this destabilize the international financial system? What will be China's role in the international economic institutions? And will the United States and other established powers accept a growing role for China and the rest of the developing world in the governance of global institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, or will the world devolve into competing blocs? This book provides unique insights into independent analyses and policy recommendations by a group of top Chinese and American scholars. Whether China succeeds or fails in economic reform will have a large impact, not just on China's development, but also on stability and prosperity for the whole world.