Taxation

"Increased biodiesel production is being proposed as one solution to the need to ease the impact of increased demand for crude oil and to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Despite this, biodiesel has yet to reach its full commercial potential, especially in the developing countries. Besides technical barriers, there are several nontechnical limiting factors which impede the development of biodiesel such as feedstock price, production cost, fossil fuel price and taxation policy. This study assesses these by undertaking a techno-economic and sensitivity analysis of biodiesel production in Malaysia, the second largest producer of crude palm oil feedstock. It was found that the life cycle cost for a 50 ktons palm biodiesel production plant with an operating period of 20 years is $665 million, yielding a payback period of 3.52 years. The largest share is the feedstock cost which accounts for 79% of total production cost. Sensitivity analysis results indicate that the variation in feedstock price will significantly affect the life cycle cost for biodiesel production. One of the most important findings of this study is that biodiesel price is compatible with diesel fuel when a fiscal incentive and subsidy policy are implemented. For instance, biodiesel price with subsidies of $0.10/l and $0.18/l is compatible and lower than fossil diesel price at crude palm oil price of $1.05/kg or below. As a conclusion, further research on technical as well as nontechnical limitations for biodiesel production is needed before biodiesel can be fully utilized. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0016236112002402/1-s2.0-S0016236112002402-main.pdf?_tid=3c75730c-a9c7-11e3-b0bc-00000aacb360&acdnat=1394616073_7998332094a7ca048c7ed86d558cf48c 
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016236112002402  "

The article approaches the process of exploitation of one’s labor developed outside the direct relations of capitalist production through the system made up by public debt and tax system. It is argued that such an exploitation tends to be more intense than the one developed exclusively in direct labor relations. The fact that public debt does not evolve direct exploitation as occurs in capitalist infrastructure makes such a debt a class relation backed up by the capitalist political superstructure. In socioeconomic terms, public debt intensifies the transfer of wealth produced by labor—what turns the working class into the actual public debt debtor—to the financial classes. This transfer is increased insofar as higher payment of interests compresses welfare expenses, what contributes to the deepening of the aggregate rate of labor exploitation. The quantitative—amount, interest rates—and the institutional characteristics—law, sovereign risk, state apparatus—of public debt assure profits to the financial capitalists in levels which are not always available in the productive sphere. Hence, the study gives greater attention to the issue of interest because it demands labor exploitation to be amplified in order to achieve satisfactory return rates on diverse capitals.

Piracy has been identified as one of the factors hindering the growth of the Kiswahili video film industry in Tanzania. The introduction of tax stamps by the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) in 2013 was intended to address the problem of piracy as well as beginning the formalization of the industry. This article discusses the implementation of this regulatory measure; it looks at the background to the idea, the execution process, benefits and the challenges to be overcome. The main objective of this paper is to document and highlight opportunities and challenges in the process of implementing the 2012 tax stamp regulation. It aims to open up discussion on whether the implementation will regulate piracy, increase artists’ income, formalize the sector and broaden the tax base, or if it just responds to political statements and wishes.

Differential Evolution (DE) is a popular technique for solving real parameter global optimization problems. Several variants of DE are proposed in literature which aims at further strengthening its performance for solving complex problems. In the present study we suggest a simple and efficient modification in the selection strategy of basic DE. The proposed strategy is named Information Preserving (IP) selection strategy. It makes use of most of the information that is generated during the different phases of DE. The proposed IP scheme is embedded in the structure of basic DE and also in DERL, another variant of DE. The numerical results indicate that the inclusion of proposed scheme significantly improves the performance in terms of convergence rate while maintaining the solution quality.