Purpose – This paper aims to present a study on the effect of income and expense shifting on the corporate income tax evasion – an example of intentional noncompliance practiced by tax agents. The authors expected that the tool used would differentiate the extent of understatement of tax liability.
Design/methodology/approach – Two experiments were conducted in which young (N 5 62) and experienced (N 5 68) tax agents read a scenario placing them in a position of an employee responsible for tax planning and calculations of tax liabilities. The respondents’ task was to decide about the extent of the tax liability understatement using income or expense shifting.
Findings – Research demonstrated significantly higher extent of corporate income tax understatement when using income shifting compared to expense shifting in case of experienced tax agents (Study 2) and on tendency level among young tax agents (Study 1).
Research limitations/implications – Results of the studies might be of interest to managers paying attention to tax procedures within the company, governmental agencies investigating corporate tax evasion, as well as educators responsible for tax agents’ initial training and lifelong learning.
Originality/value – This study concentrates on tax agents who are employed in companies and corporate income tax evasion, which has not been analyzed in the literature so far.

Purpose – This paper aims to verify how the intellectual property (IP) box affects firms’ effective tax rate, growth and innovation activity outcomes related to intellectual property rights.
Design/methodology/approach – Implementing the innovation box regimes into the tax system intends to encourage firms to engage in more innovative activities. In UK, Italy and Poland, the IP box tax relief was introduced in 2013, 2015 and 2019, respectively. In return, companies may reduce their tax rate to increase their investment and innovativeness. With a panel model approach – system GMM and DiD with multiple time periods – it analyses data from the Orbis database for 2011–2019 of 673 firms from the gaming industry in 11 countries and hand-collected data on intellectual property rights protection. The authors study public and private companies from the gaming sector in leading European markets and all three countries that protect intellectual property rights of software (Japan, South Korea, the USA).
Findings – Recent reforms enable gaming companies to use preferential tax treatment for IP-related income and significantly impact a firm’s revenue growth.
Practical implications – Nevertheless, European gaming firms require time to leap the gap to the growth and innovativeness of countries that protect software.
Originality/value – The authors show that the IP box stimulates gaming firms to protect IP via wordmarks, figurative marks, trademarks and software patents that bring effects in five years. Despite the critics against IP box, the authors prove its lagged efficiency, especially in profitable and larger firms.

Purpose: One of the regulatory responses to the 2008 financial crisis was to internalize the costs related to banks’ distress by introducing bank levies. More than 23 European banking sectors have been confronted with the new levy regime imposing the additional tax on banks’ balance sheet.

Methodology: This study analyzes the effect of the levy introduction on banks’ profitability, credit activity, and on their business models. More importantly, we confront two different levy regimes – one imposed on banks’ assets and the other on liabilities – to assess their differential impact. A generalized least squares regression with a random effect is performed on a data sample of Hungarian and German credit institutions from 2005 to 2015.

Results: The results show that levy introduction weakened banking sectors in terms of their profitability as well as their lending activity. Even though banks try to compensate for the cost of the levies by passing some of the costs on to the customers and restructuring their operations to limit the tax burden, we find that these activities are not sufficient to offset the whole tax burden. We also note that while the asset levy has a more severe effect on banks’ profits, the liability levy severely affects banks’ lending due to lower interest margin resulting from higher cost of funding.

Findings: Our research results provide important conclusions for regulators, especially during turbulent periods such as the COVID-19 pandemic to strengthen the banking sectors by considering the levy suspension.

Purpose: This article seeks to assess the scale of using the funds from Poland’s 1% of personal income tax scheme in the funding of public benefit activity conducted by public benefit organizations in the area of promotion of sports and physical culture. Moreover, it attempts to establish the determinants of revenues from this source earned by individual organizations.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The article presents the results of own research based on a sample of 100 random public benefit organizations. Research conclusions are formulated based on the literature and legislation review, data from the financial statements and technical reports of selected organizations, and statistical methods selected to verify the formulated hypotheses.
Findings: The revenues earned by the organizations from the 1% scheme do not depend on conventional factors, such as organization coverage, the number of beneficiaries, and the persons involved in the activity of the organization or duration of public benefit activity.
Research limitations/Implications: The model developed for research purposes considers no immeasurable factors that may affect the amount of earned revenues, such as recognizability of organization in the society or taxpayer loyalty.
Originality/Value: Our research pioneers the issue of determinants of funds acquired by the organizations from the 1% scheme. Research conclusions can be regarded as a voice in the discussion on the sources of funding the operation of foundations and associations.

Purpose: To determine the impact of changes in tax burden in Ukraine on the country’s economic freedom.

Methodology: The study applies qualitative methods for historical analysis, periodization of reforms, and classification of their key priorities and influences. Quantitative methods are applied to compare tax burden (tax-to-GDP ratio) in Ukraine and OECD countries. The overall success and failure of tax reforms was measured by the index of economic freedom, including its component, the index of tax burden (fiscal freedom). The first hypothesis suggested that a reduction in tax burden positively impacted the level of economic freedom in Ukraine; the second hypothesis stated that a reduction in tax burden positively affected the fiscal freedom of Ukraine. Regressions in average tax burden and the index of economic freedom, including the index of tax burden, were built in R software.

Findings: Regression analysis did not confirm the first hypothesis. The second hypothesis was confirmed. Reduced tax burden does not affect the level of economic freedom of Ukraine. This is explained by the slow progress of institutional reforms in Ukraine. The reduction of tax burden has a significant positive impact on the level of fiscal freedom.

Practical Implications: The results obtained have practical relevance for the elaboration of fiscal policies in developing countries, in accordance with the country’s economic and political development priorities.

Research Limitations/Implications: Future research will include a more in-depth comparative
analysis of tax reforms in Ukraine, focusing on the key taxes.

Purpose: Capital flows, tax competition, multinational companies and tax havens weakens governments’ ability to lead independent tax policy. This race to the bottom, especially in the case of CIT rate, seems to work. Aim of the text is to show that the governments are not as powerless as it is often claimed. Despite common opinion, nation-states retain a relatively significant autonomy in creating their own fiscal policies, including tax instruments. Size of funds kept in tax havens have not been growing for few years and international cooperation of tax authorities is more and more efficient in dealing with the tax fraud.

Methodology: The study uses desk research method for theoretical reasoning to verify the research
hypothesis. Moreover, the study seeks answering if the application of EU tax policies determines national tax policy. To that end, the authors utilize time series and cause-effect analysis, as well as quantitative research for the systematization of statistical information and regression analysis for the examination of statistical dependencies. Tax competition or the functioning of tax havens naturally limits the realization of the fundamental functions of fiscal policies, although the taxation remains one
of the most crucial instruments of macroeconomic and income policy of national authorities.

Findings: The most important data on public revenues structure in different OECD countries indicate
that taxation remains one of the most crucial instruments of macroeconomic and income policy of
national authorities. We also show that impact of FDI on hosting economy is not as positive as it is
said to be. There is no relation between FDI and R&D spending and level of wages in hosting country
is even affected in the negative way by the FDI inflow. Irrespective of the regulatory details introduced at the EU level – the basic factor affecting jets coordination in the field of cooperation between tax services brings effects both in terms of the current collection of tax liabilities
and the creation of regulations that hinder tax avoidance and under statement assessment.

Originality/value: The study focuses on an analysis of tax policy. The view that taxation of international corporations is fraught with difficulties finds support in the undeniable reality of tax competition.Moreover, a large and growing share of profits is transferred to low-tax places. The prospects for taxing international companies with positive rates seem unoptimistic. Therefore, it is essential to check how the national economy is affected by the FDI inflow in OECD countries.

Purpose: A wide range of approaches to defning, modelling, and measuring international competitiveness can be found in the scholarly literature across various felds of management and economics. Such number of perspectives enhances scientifc research, but confuses public debate. Despite certain defnitional ambiguities, there is a consensus that international competitiveness is a multi­ ­faceted concept that should be analysed at different levels of aggregation: company level (micro), industry/cluster level (mezzo) and national level (macro). This paper addresses international competitiveness at all three levels and tracks the interlinkages between them with the aim to fnd a common ground for understanding this economic phenomenon in a systemic perspective: as a complex whole.

Methodology: The paper constitutes an in­depth literature review, forming a basis for a new approach to categorizing the main perspectives on international competitiveness. A synthesis of the latest international competitiveness literature sources has been performed in order to categorize the existing approaches to defning, modelling, and measuring international competitiveness. Following Chandhuri’s and Ray’s (1997) two­dimensional classifcation approach (the level of analysis and the variable), the paper introduces new insights into the existing taxonomy of international competitiveness.

Findings: Based upon the developed taxonomy, the paper offers an interdisciplinary, multi­layered model of international competitiveness.

Originality: The offered fndings enhance the active shaping of modern competitiveness research directions to support the competitiveness policy on the regional and national level.

Purpose: To analyse the impact of the Polish fiscal regime on the general revenue of the country, and specifically to establish whether the cumulative tax burden borne by Polish households is progressive or regressive.

Methodology: On the basis of Eurostat and OECD data, the author has analysed fiscal regimes in EU Member States and in OECD countries. The tax burden of households within different income groups has also been examined pursuant to applicable fiscal laws and data pertaining to the revenue and expenditure of households published by the Central Statistical Office (CSO).

Conclusions: The fiscal regime in Poland is regressive; that is, the relative fiscal burden decreases as the taxpayer’s income increases.
Research Implications: The article contributes to the on-going discussion on social cohesion, in particular with respect to economic policy instruments aimed at the redistribution of income within the economy.

Originality: The author presents an analysis of data pertaining to fiscal policies in EU Member States and OECD countries and assesses the impact of the legal environment (fiscal regime and social security system) in Poland on income distribution within the economy. The impact of the total tax burden (direct and indirect taxes, social security contributions) on the economic situation of households from different income groups has been calculated using an original formula.

behavior of investors and government in the process of decision-making related to financing designed
to reduce risks in investment activity.

Methodology: Considering the interdependent type (nature) of interactions between related parties,
game theory tools were used to model such interactions. Much attention was directed to search for
parameters of interaction leading to certain Nash equilibriums in pure strategies. The formal results
obtained with the model were verified by statistical analysis.
Findings: Analysis showed that the rational behavior of related parties can lead to unexpected
results. Powerful investors will aim to work in socially-oriented economies, whereas primarily
small investors will operate in most liberal economies with a minimum tax burden but with a higher
level of risk. As for governments’ behaviors, the images are the same: small economies tend to
liberalize their tax systems and to secure investment faster than powerful ones. Empirical verification
based on statistical data of groups of countries generally confirmed the conclusions. These
formal and logical conclusions were from statistical analysis of 124 countries divided into 5 groups:
OECD countries, post-socialist countries, Latin American countries, APAC countries and ACP
countries. Provided that the more powerful ones are covered economies, there was stronger interdependence
between the size of economies and tax burden and also between total investment and
tax burden, where this dependence is positive.

Originality: The results obtained used Nash equilibriums in pure strategies as models of behavioral
norms to define behaviors of related parties and also to explain assumptions concerning the
behaviors of investors and government.

Purpose: The article introduces a concept of the economic imagination, describes economic public attitudes and discusses the character of the contemporary economic imagination of Poles.

Methodology: Representative survey conducted on the stratifi ed random sample of 1022 adult respondents by means of CAPI (computer assisted personal interview). Statistical analysis of data.

Findings: The features perceived by public as economically benefi cial to the entire economy, particular enterprises and individuals have been ranked by the representative survey and statistically grouped into more general clusters. Those considered as good for the economy are grouped into such factors as “investment and competition”, “statism (etatism)” and “progressive taxation”. The features considered as benefi cial for the enterprises are grouped into “human, social and economic capital”, “law obedience and good social relations” and “limited free market”. Personal characteristics perceived as benefi cial for individual’s economic success are grouped into “honesty, perseverance and good social relations”, “skills and diligence” and “nepotism and instrumentalism”. Intensity as well as determinants of such general value loaded convictions, and their impact on acceptance of democracy have been revealed as well.

Implications: Economic imagination has to be analysed as an important factor of socio-economic system’s legitimization.

Originality: Distinction and empirical defi nition of economic attitudinal syndromes at three different levels: macro-economic, enterprise and individual constitute a novelty in socio-economic research. Discussion of their determinants and wider implications constitute a new contribution to the theory of social legitimization.