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Financial crises charge nations immense costs and lead to weakening of wellbeing. Politicians, professionals and academicians search for understanding of causes of financial crisis to enable them to spot their first hallmarks, and to adopt efficient regulative measures that may prevent financial crises and accompanying costs. When economists discuss an occurrence of the 2008 financial crisis they pay attention to plentiful reasons - but not taxes. This paper aims to investigate possible role income taxes might have played in the securitisation of bank assets in 2008 financial crisis. To understand role taxes taken in the outburst of the 2008 financial crisis, the paper first briefly explains role of securitisation of bank's assets in the outburst of the 2008 financial crisis. Then it discusses requirement of tax neutrality of securitisation. Empirical research focuses on the relationship between favourable taxing jurisdictions in tax havens and location of the commercial banks' branches and commercial banks' assets. It shows that offshore centres which are said to provide preferential tax regimes promote location of branches and assets of commercial banks therein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization, modern information technologies and international mobility of capital provide opportunities to shift capital and establish companies' seats around the world. The strategy that combines conduit companies and advantages of tax treaties is known as treaty shopping. Several EU Member States did not conclude tax treaties with tax havens countries. However, some other EU countries did. The findings of our analysis of the entire network of bilateral tax treaties concluded by all EU MSs show, that the later countries' tax treaties enable income tax reduction or avoidance also to residents of those EU MSs which did not sign bilateral tax treaties with tax havens. The network of tax treaties with tax havens signed by some EU MSs contributes to erosion of EU MSs' tax bases and government budget revenues. Elimination of tax treaties abuse would require common supranational EU policy in concluding bilateral tax treaties including the selection of treaty partners or adoption of one EU multilateral tax treaty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two ways how to finance companies, either by equity or by debt. Tax consequence of each is different. Chance to reduce corporate income tax base by interest deduction motivates companies to prefer debt over equity financing. Due to this reason some companies are thin capitalized and actual government tax revenues are lower than potential revenues. To eliminate tax motivated thin capitalization, governments around the world have introduced thin capitalization rules for tax purposes. This paper puts under scrutiny a design of thin capitalization rules with aim to provide their general classification. It shows, that taxing jurisdictions have plenty options to design thin capitalization rules and this may make differences between taxing jurisdictions stronger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The latest financial and economic crisis has influenced financing decisions in business entities. The growing trend of thin capitalization rules implementation can be observed in many countries, to restrict abuse of loans and interest tax shield as a tax planning technique. The paper investigates main changes in companies' capital structure influenced by potential imposition of thin capitalization rules in the Slovak Republic. The subject of investigation is also an appraisal of tax impacts on companies' decision making in case of implementation of these rules. The main source of data utilized in the paper is a national database of Slovak business entities. Our results could confirm that the decision making about capital structure of companies in Slovakia is sensitive to thin capitalization rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The corporate M&A activity is affected by many factors where - based on the prior research - capital gains tax is one of them. The aim of this paper is to examine an existence of a negative relationship between corporate M&As and the lock-in effect in EU-countries. Our assumption will be verified by using a panel regression analysis with the number of M&As as a dependent variable and the capital gains taxes and other selected determinants as independent variables. Our research result could confirm that the negative relationship between dependent variable and capital gains taxes implies a negative impact on flexible corporate reorganization in the time of the crisis. The contribution of our research will be an assessment of influence of capital gains policy, the lock-in effect and selected determinants on the corporate M&As activity in EUcountries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]