Suchergebnisse

In the process of furthering EU integration little attention was given to the role of income taxes. Multiple income tax systems exist across the Union and their differentiation negatively impacts the European labor market, investments and savings, inhibiting economic growth. Individual nations have little motivation to harmonize as they can engage in tax rate competition and income taxes are interwoven with social security systems that make any attempts at reform extremely complex and politically unpopular. Much of current harmonization is silent", paralegal, and occurs in response to market forces rather than following a formal plan and through intergovernmental cooperation.

One of the objectives of Pakistan's Third Five Year Plan is
"to make sub¬stantial progress towards achieving certain specific social
objectives such as diminishing inequalities in the distribution of
income " [4, p.39]. The main purpose of the present study is to measure
these inequalities. As the basic source we have used provides data on
private consumption as well as on personal income, some rough
calculations on personal savings (as residuals) have been included in
this paper. Income distribution and savings in Pakistan have been
studied by others in the past. A few papers have appeared in this Review
and elsewhere [3; 6 and 10]. However, due to the limitations of data,
all of them have been confined to the coverage of particular
geographical areas, population groups or industrial sectors, whereas the
present paper, in principle, deals with all personal income and savings
in the country. The data for this study were mainly obtained from the
"Quarterly Surveys of Current Economic Conditions" conducted by the
Central Statistical Office (CSO) during the fiscal year 1963/64. Since
similar information was not available for other years, the scope of the
present study had to be limited to the one year, 1963/64. This severe
limitation must be fully kept in mind when conclusions are drawn on the
basis of our findings. While the results may be valid for 1963/64, their
generalization over time would depend on the degree of stability of the
various functional and structural relationships involved. E.g.,
aggregate personal savings rates are probably very