This chapter examines the scope of the Commonwealth’s power to impose taxation.The tax power enables the Commonwealth to raise revenue, as well as to indirectly regulate behaviour by using taxes to encourage or discourage behaviour. In general terms, a tax is a compulsory exaction of money for public purposes enforceable by law and which is not a fine or pecuniary penalty, a fee for service or a fee for a licence. The Constitution imposes special rules about the procedure for enacting federal tax laws, which are not justiciable, and special rules about the content of federal tax laws, which are justiciable. The Constitution also makes the power to impose duties of customs and excise an exclusively federal power, thereby limiting the power of the States to impose taxes on goods.

Paths to a liberal order are not limited to those followed by Western countries. A possible Middle Eastern starting point was zakat, Islam’s only “pillar” with an explicitly economic function. Zakat appears in the Quran as a system that finances designated state expenses through a tax on wealth and income. The rates were low by the standards of Antiquity, and they were fixed. Besides, the payment of zakat legitimated the underlying wealth or income. Hence, it could have served as the foundation for political checks and balances based on secure private ownership. Yet zakat’s specifics were suited specifically to Arabia; it left out major sources of income and wealth in the broader Middle East. For these reasons alone, rulers imposed extra-Islamic taxes. Having set precedents for arbitrary taxation, they then essentially stopped enforcing zakat. A Quran-based Islamic institution for empowering the individual against the state thus turned into a minor device for local poor relief. The waqf’s emergence in the 700s as a core Islamic institution was a creative response to zakat’s abandonment as a state-enforced transfer system. Its unintended effects, such as the persistent weakness of civil society, are rooted, then, in zakat’s loss of relevance to Islamic governance.

An underappreciated difference between fifth- and fourth-century Rome was the emergence of stipendium and tributum (military pay and the land tax to fund it). Encompassing every citizen landowner and soldier, stipendium and tributum likely involved more people than any other civic institution at Rome. Moreover, this fiscal system changed the way in which Rome operated. It created a set of tasks that needed to be completed; it then instituted a new set of roles to complete those tasks; then it elevated a set of people in order to fill those roles; and finally those people developed new tactics to derive maximum benefit from their new functions. The key stakeholders in all this were the tribuni aerarii, who operated the system in local areas across the countryside. Though poorly attested in the extant sources, these men had the ability to control the smooth operations of the war machine. They promptly realized that they could hold the fiscal system hostage to extract political concessions. The exclusive rule of Rome’s patrician leaders, now reliant on plebeians to pay and collect taxes, was doomed.

This chapter critically examines the fifth and last criterion of the proposed framework for social enterprise law, namely, distribution of dividends and assets, and allocation of tax benefits. I assess how restrictions on the distribution of dividends and assets can ensure that the pursuit of social benefit is not subordinated to that of profit-making by analyzing the CIC regulations. I argue that these restrictions in themselves do not necessarily ensure that the pursuit of social benefit is prioritized over profit-making. Under my criterion, it is argued that directors should be required to issue a report specifying whether and how they have complied with the corporate purpose, among other requirements. In addition, they should be required to engage in a critically self-reflexive process on how they measure impact based on the proposed three-step framework. I also argue that because investors need to be incentivized to invest in social enterprises and given that a central challenge facing social enterprises in Asia is poor access to funding, I consider how tax law can be used to incentivize investments from shareholders.

Waging war has always been a very expensive endeavour, requiring a solid basis for economic power in order to finance it. In the eighteenth century warring sides frequently resorted to financial help from their well-heeled allies. This chapter examines the peculiar challenges that confronted the Habsburg Empire as it sought to raise funds and resources to sustain its wars against France. Despite the economic and financial problems and the military losses of every single war of the Habsburg monarchy it managed to remain in war against France until 1809. The Habsburg monarchy waged these wars with a great number of soldiers, getting its lands occupied by the enemy and its economy attacked by bad money, yet found a way to remain liquid until state bankruptcy in 1811. In spite of these economic, financial and military crises Austria persevered as European player.

The chapter places Churchill’s lifespan firmly within ‘the golden age of print’. It looks at his apprenticeship as a writer, served while in the army, explaining how his early books helped him earn the war chest that allowed him to launch his political career, before showing how his shrewd and selective use of sources for his biography of Lord Randolph Churchill allowed him to reconcile his role as a defender of his father’s political legacy with his own move to the Liberal Party. Churchill’s working methods also changed as he entered government. He used a team to help produce his multi-volume history of the First World War in order to defend his role in the Dardanelles operation. Thereafter, Churchill had to juggle managing his tax liability as an author with his need for more income, but by the 1930s he was committed to several major publishing projects. After the war, he sought to capitalise on his premiership through his multi-volume histories of the Second World War and the History of the English-Speaking Peoples. The chapter analyses how Churchill managed his various literary projects, sheds light on his own role in the creative process and looks at how this changed over time.

The US is often placed within a liberal-utilitarian model and the EU is often positioned within a social model. In corporate law theory, this distinction is presented as contractarianism versus communitarianism. The latter has traditionally represented the EU’s approach to corporate regulation, while the former represents the US approach. Rather than adhere to such neat divisions and other binary choices such as regulatory models versus voluntarist models such as the corporate social responsibility model, this chapter argues that the true resolution of difficulties associated with capitalism lies in the development of a new theoretical framework driven by an ethical challenge to those acting behind the corporate veil or under its shadow. This chapter exhorts that if we move on from binary divisions and present a meaningful ethical challenge to corporate actors such as shareholders and management, we can ensure better outcomes.

Does the First Amendment forbid reforms to save and improve newsgathering, production, and distribution? All features of the news ecosystem are currently under threat, but some interpretations suggest that the First Amendment either forbids relevant government action or has no relevance. Debates about potential reforms of the businesses and structures wreaking havoc on news and information in the United States often hit a roadblock: the assumption that the First Amendment bars government from playing a role in media systems and news industries.1 Victor Pickard calls this “First Amendment fundamentalism.”2 We can understand why internet tech platforms invoke the First Amendment against any regulation and measures requiring them to pay for news posted on their sites but gathered by others. Avoiding regulation makes their work easier and their bottom line richer. But the First Amendment is not such a bar.

This chapter surveys the major developments in the economic history of the Greek world in the classical period (479–323 BCE). While agricultural practices and productive capacities did not change dramatically, this was a period characterized by a massive increase in the demand for certain commodities, especially timber for the ship-building and monumental-construction efforts of the period and grain to meet the dietary needs of a growing human population. It also considers the major developments in the supply and circulation of coinage in the classical period and the emergence of private banking and the expansion of credit, all of which facilitated both local and long-distance trade. As trade intensified throughout the Aegean and poleis developed more sophisticated institutions for local governance, they developed strategies to derive revenue from trade and imposed regulations on both the production and trade of commodities in which they had a special interest.

This final chapter looks at the alternatives between unilateral digital services taxes and a multilateral consensus on international tax reform. It analyses the key features of digital services taxes and contrasts the advantages and disadvantages against a multilateral solution. Then it goes on to analyse five key future international tax trends that form part of the 2020s compromise and considers the tax implications in the light of the COVID-19 crisis.

This final chapter looks at the alternatives between unilateral digital services taxes and a multilateral consensus on international tax reform. It analyses the key features of digital services taxes and contrasts the advantages and disadvantages against a multilateral solution. Then it goes on to analyse five key future international tax trends that form part of the 2020s compromise and considers the tax implications in the light of the COVID-19 crisis.

The defining characteristic of common law systems is the development of law through the resolution of disputes by the judges. This precept is anchored in the doctrine of judicial precedent, effected through a system of courts reflecting a hierarchical network of authority. Judicial precedent depends on an authoritative and accessible report of the courts’ decisions. In the long nineteenth century this connection was weak or non-existent in the law of tax. In the rare instances where appeals were permitted, few were reported in a form acceptable to the emerging doctrine of judicial precedent. This had a profound effect on the nascent substantive tax law. It inhibited the robust development of its principles and the interpretation of tax legislation, thereby undermining the quality of tax law and process. It also promoted the isolation of tax law from the norms and values of the legal system well into the twentieth century.

A Narrative of Sovereignty: looks at the tangible ramifications that Supreme Court decisions have had and continue to have on reservation life. The piece focuses on the Navajo Nation and tracks how its tribal laws and policies have evolved with changing Supreme Court decisions from 1970 to 2003 to try to meet the needs of its people while living with the limits placed upon its authority by the courts. Krakoff concludes that courts need to be more cognizant of the effects of their decisions on reservation communities to ensure the cultural survival of American Indians.