News by Subject Social & Behavior

Small municipalities in Ohio that rely on retail sales taxes from apparel, vehicle sales, restaurants and tourism could see as much as a 50 percent decline in tax revenue because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study has found.

A new study shows the surprising way that many American taxpayers adjust their standard of living when they owe money to the IRS versus when they receive tax refunds. Researchers found that when households received tax refunds, they immediately started spending that new money. But those same households didn't cut their spending in years when they owed taxes to the IRS.

A consumer tax on the saturated fat, salt and sugar content of food, accompanied by a 20 per cent subsidy on fruit and vegetables, would bring major benefits for the health sector, researchers from Otago, Auckland and Melbourne Universities say.

Many countries are failing to comply with the non-binding commitments of the Paris Agreement, making it increasingly clear that we have to reconsider how to ensure collective action to limit global warming to less than 2°C above preindustrial levels. A new IIASA-led study supports a different approach to designing an international climate agreement that would incentivize countries to cooperate.

New research finds that corporate tax-planning practices improve when a company's board takes an interest -- and better planning results in both less tax uncertainty and a lower tax burden.

Research on visa restrictions designed to help American graduates seeking jobs during the pandemic-fueled economic downturn are likely to further hurt the economy, according to new UC San Diego research on immigrant rights.

Local and state policymakers push economic development incentives to spur job creation and economic wealth. The outstanding question is, 'do these various types of financial incentives--tax credits, abatements, grants, and others--work?' The selected research papers in the May issue of Economic Development Quarterly (EDQ) focus on estimating the effect of local and state financial incentives in shaping business location decisions.

A new study looked at US tax policy as it relates to carbon dioxide (CO2), from 2015 through 2030. The study found only limited short-term opportunities for decarbonization (reducing greenhouse gas emissions) outside the electricity sector. The result is substantial CO2 tax revenue. The findings shed light on future tax policy decisions.

As the world economy is falling into one of the biggest contractions of the last decades, a new study of economic recession patterns finds that the likelihood of a downturn was high even before the onset of the Coronavirus crisis.