The wartime origins of Irish corporation tax

A short paper that I wrote for the Irish Society of Comparative Law conference in 2012 has just been published here in the Irish Journal of Legal Studies.  It examines the UK corporation tax of 1920 and asks why it was retained in the Irish Free State even after its abolition in the reduced UK.  This is all the more surprising given that the views of UK politicians that

“[e]veryone admits it is not a good tax ... many think that it bears exceptionally heavily on enterprise and industry” (Baldwin)

“[i]t was unloved by its parents, it was reviled by its subsequent guardians, it was condemned by every party, not least by the Labour Party” (Snowden)

were widely shared in Ireland.  The article reaches surprising conclusions rooted in economic nationalism and notes the irony in Ireland being widely criticised for its excessive corporation tax rates of c.5%.

As a footnote, Ernest Blythe seems to have been an interesting character, and was known to my grandmother.

O'Donnell Review

The O'Donnell review, Financing Britain's Future: Review of the Revenue Departments, led to the amalgamation of the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise in 2005.  In principle, it is available online, but the links have been disrupted by the move to gov.uk, and I have only been able to find the first chapter, here.  Meanwhile, I have posted the entire document here.

Hartnett Report 2001

The Inland Revenue report Review of Links with Business was issued in 2001 and is known as the "Hartnett Report" after its author.  I had some difficulty finding a copy, but the following link (here) works at the time of posting.  The PDF button goes nowhere but pressing "RTF" retrieves the full report.

Update 24/06/13: a better copy is available here.

Oxford CBT Annual Doctoral Meeting

Details of Oxford CBT doctoral meeting here.

CIPFA and ICAEW magazines

Links to Public Finance and Economia, including commentary on the recent Public Accounts Committee activity with respect to tax avoidance, secondments, tax havens and so forth.

RN Carter, Advanced Accounts

Accounting textbook from 1915 available online here: RN Carter (ed), Advanced Accounts: A Manual of Advanced Book-keeping and Accountancy for Accountants, Book-keepers and Business Men (New York: EP Dutton, 1915)

Cambridge history conference 2012

The draft papers from the Cambridge Centre for Tax Law history conference can be found here.

Soft law in (Australian) taxation

UK Constitutional Law blog post on Macquarie Bank Limited v Commissioner of Taxation [2013] FCA 96 and taxpayer reliance on revenue authority statements.

British Budgets vol. 1 (1877-1913)

The first volume of the invaluable British Budgets series, by Bernard Mallett, is here and covers the years 1877-8 to 1912-3.

"Intolerable Inquisition"

The Hamlyn Lectures website at the University of Exeter includes a link to the invaluable Intolerable Inquisition by Hubert Monroe.