Tax By Design: The Mirrlees Review

Front Cover
Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), James Mirrlees
OUP Oxford, Sep 1, 2011 - Business & Economics - 560 pages
Tax by Design identifies what makes a good tax system for an open developed economy in the 21st century and suggests how the UK tax system could be reformed to move in that direction. The recommendations stress the importance of neutrality and transparency in tax design. It draws on the expert evidence from the commissioned chapters and commentaries in Dimensions of Tax Design. It also acknowledges the growing importance of globalised markets and multinational corporations as well as the challenges created by changing population demographics, the growth of new technologies, and the broadened objectives of policy makers. The Commission's work was directed by: Timothy Besley Richard Blundell Malcolm Gammie James Poterba The Commission's editorial team: Stuart Adam Stephen Bond Robert Chote Paul Johnson Gareth Myles

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Contents

1 Introduction
1
2 The Economic Approach to Tax Design
21
3 The Taxation of Labour Earnings
46
4 Reforming the Taxation of Earnings in the UK
73
5 Integrating Personal Taxes and Benefits
122
6 Taxing Goods and Services
148
7 Implementation of VAT
167
8 VAT and Financial Services
195
13 The Taxation of Household Savings
283
14 Reforming the Taxation of Savings
318
15 Taxes on Wealth Transfers
347
16 The Taxation of Land and Property
368
17 Taxing Corporate Income
406
18 Corporate Taxation in an International Context
429
19 Small Business Taxation
451
20 Conclusions and Recommendations for Reform
470

9 Broadening the VAT Base
216
10 Environmental Taxation
231
11 Tax and Climate Change
246
12 Taxes on Motoring
269
References
504
Index
525
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About the author (2011)

Sir James Mirrlees is a Fellow of Trinity College and Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge, Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, and Distinguished Professor-at-Large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and past President of the Econometric Society, the Royal Economic Society, and the European Economic Association, and has been awarded numerous honorary degrees. Working primarily on the economics of incentives and asymmetric information, he founded the modern theory of optimal taxation, and was the joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1996. He was knighted in 1997 for contributions to economic science. In 2009, he was appointed Founding Master of the Morningside College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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