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on Accounting and Auditing |
| By: | Carlo Alberto Magni |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the relations among different concepts such as earnings, profit, interest, rate, consumption, dividend, installment, cash flow, capital. It aims atembracing these notions in a unique conceptual "umbrella" , consisting of five perspectives: (1) accounting, (2) economic theory, (3) theory of finance, (4) loan theory, (5) financial mathematics. These notions and these domains constitute a seeming mishmash: in fact, the hub of the umbrella is given by a unique fundamental relation, shared by all five perspectives and whose ingredients are capital, profit, and cash flow. On the basis of the fundamental relation, market value and book value of a firm are easily obtained. |
| Date: | 2009–07–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000162:005730&r=acc |
| By: | Carlo Alberto Magni |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a method for evaluating a project under certainty by means of a systemic outlook, which borrows from accounting the way of representing economic facts while replacing accounting values with cash values. The investor's net worth is regarded as a system whose structure changes over time. On this basis, a profitability index is presented, here named Systemic Value Added (SVA), which lends itself to a periodic decomposition. While as an overall index the Systemic Value Added coincides with the Net Final Value (NFV) of an investment, the systemic partition of a SVA is shown to differ from the Net Present Value (NPV) decomposition model proposed by Peccati (1987, 1992), which in turn bears a strong resemblance to Stewart's (1991) EVA model. The different assumptions the three models rely on are analysed: Some inconsistencies arise in the NFV-based approach, which give rise to Peccati's and Stewart's model, but they can be healed (only in a certain sense) by re-shaping the model and taking account of the systemic approach. To this end, the introduction of a shadow project is needed which enables us to avoid compounding. An interesting result is that we can decompose the SVA of a project by applying Peccati's argument to its shadow, or which is the same, by computing the shadow project's Economic Value Added. The paper then generalizes the approach allowing for a portfolio of projects, multiple debts and multiple synchronic opportunity costs of capital, for which a tetra-dimensional decomposition is easily obtained. |
| Date: | 2009–08–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000162:005737&r=acc |
| By: | Rolf Aaberge; Ugo Colombino |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to present an exercise where we identify optimal income tax rules according to various social welfare criteria, keeping fixed the total net tax revenue. Empirical applications of optimal taxation theory have typically adopted analytical expressions for the optimal taxes and then imputed numerical values to their parameters by using “calibration” procedures or previous econometric estimates. Besides the restrictiveness of the assumptions needed to obtain analytical solutions to the optimal taxation problem, a shortcoming of that procedure is the possible inconsistency between the theoretical assumptions and the assumptions implicit in the empirical evidence. In this paper we follow a different procedure, based on a computational approach to the optimal taxation problem. To this end, we estimate a microeconomic model with 78 parameters that capture heterogeneity in consumption-leisure preferences for singles and couples as well as in job opportunities across individuals based on detailed Norwegian household data for 1994. For any given tax rule, the estimated model can be used to simulate the labour supply choices made by single individuals and couples. Those choices are therefore generated by preferences and opportunities that vary across the decision units. We then identify optimal tax rules – within a class of 9-parameter piece-wise linear rules - by iteratively running the model until a given social welfare function attains its maximum under the constraint of keeping constant the total net tax revenue. The parameters to be determined are an exemption level, four marginal tax rates, three “kink points” and a lump sum transfer that can be positive (benefit) or negative (tax). We explore a variety of social welfare functions with differing degree of inequality aversion. All the social welfare functions imply monotonically increasing marginal tax rates. When compared with the current (1994) tax systems, the optimal rules imply a lower average tax rate. Moreover, all the optimal rules imply – with respect to the current rule – lower marginal rates on low and/or average income levels and higher marginal rates on relatively high income levels. These results are partially at odds with the tax reforms that took place in many countries during the last decades. While those reforms embodied the idea of lowering average tax rates, the way to implement it has typically consisted in reducing the top marginal rates. Our results instead suggest to lower average tax rates by reducing marginal rates on low and average income levels and increasing marginal rates on very high income levels. |
| Keywords: | Labour supply, optimal taxation, random utility model, microsimulation. |
| JEL: | H21 H31 J22 |
| Date: | 2008–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:icr:wpicer:19-2008&r=acc |
| By: | Patricia Apps |
| Abstract: | In the early 1980’s Australia had a highly progressive, individual based income tax and families received support for dependent children in the form of universal family allowances. The introduction of income tests for child support payments based on family income (now in the form of Family Tax Benefit Part A), together with changes in the rate scale applying to personal income, have had the effect of replacing Australia’s progressive individual based income tax with a system that tends towards one of joint taxation under a rate scale that exhibits an inverted U-shaped profile – the highest marginal rates apply to average incomes, and to the incomes of the second earner in the family. This paper shows how the introduction of this new income tax system has shifted the overall burden of taxation towards families with two-earners on low and average wages and to working married mothers in particular as second earners. The paper proposes a return to a progressive individual based income tax and universal family payments for dependent children, for reasons of both fairness and efficiency, and argues for the elimination of policy instruments that create complexity and serve only to reduce the transparency of tax reform. |
| Keywords: | Income taxation, Family benefits, Time allocation, Labour supply, Household production, Discrimination |
| JEL: | D91 H24 H31 I38 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2009–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:dpaper:609&r=acc |
| By: | Roberto Ghiselli Ricci; Carlo Alberto Magni |
| Abstract: | Two measures of excess profit (residual income) are currently available in the literature: the standard one, of which Economic Value Added (EVA) (Stewart, 1991) is a major instantiation, and Systemic Value Added (SVA) (Magni, 2003, 2004, 2005), also named lost-capital residual income (Magni, 2009a,b). This paper shows that, unlike EVA, SVA is symmetric and additively coherent. Also, EVA and SVA are not simply different in value but also convey different information about good or bad performances. |
| Date: | 2009–07–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000162:005736&r=acc |