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Taxation Of National Tax Sovereignty For Income Tax

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In this essay, the issues for taxation of national tax sovereignty for income tax, corporation tax, value added tax and excise duties are discussed as well as an opinion as to whether sovereign nations should compete or co-operate on matters of tax policy. Sovereign nations have different tax rates and they tend to change with each tax year. The issues of direct and indirect taxes are numerous and this essay will discuss two major aspects of each using the recent issue of Scotland’s independence for major explanations. These are direct taxes such as Income tax and Corporation tax; indirect taxes such as Value Added Tax (VAT) and Excise tax.
Income tax as defined by Melville, 2014 (page 15) is: “tax assessed for a tax year (or “year of assessment”) and is based on the taxpayer 's total income for the year from all sources, ignoring any income which is exempt from income tax” . Sovereign nations set their own taxes individually and as such taxpayers respond differently depending on the changes in tax rate in the respective tax system. The changes in income tax rate from one tax year to another affects both high and low income earners. However, in an analysis for four decades of the US tax system, it was concluded that high-income earners tend to respond to a greater extent to tax changes than low-income tax payers . Likewise, Micro economists suggest that this is majorly due to the fact that educational achievements are a major contributor to the differences in income between

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