Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Huge sigh of relief

With three weeks to spare before I head to Singapore for two weeks of teaching followed by two weeks of touring in Vietnam (mainly Sapa, Halong Bay, and Hoi An), I have finished a first draft of my forthcoming book for the Urban Institute Press, The U.S. Corporate Tax: What Is It, and Where Is It Headed? Although I still have to re-read and edit it carefully, before submitting it and getting comments from various official and unofficial reviewers, it looks like I'm going to meet the submission deadline (end of June), along with the length requirement (no more than 75,000 words, and right now I'm at 68,457).

I generally meet any and all deadlines, but not without reasonable and even at times unreasonable anxiety. (Although, as Bush would say, I sleep reasonably well notwithstanding.)

Chapter headings for the book - which I hope will appeal to policymakers and academics as well as being well-suited to assign as course reading to students in various types of institutions - are as follows:

1. Introduction

Part One: Basics

2. Why Have a Corporate Tax?

3. Efficiency Problems With the Corporate Tax

4. Pillars of Sand in the Structure of the Corporate Tax

Part Two: Economic Theory Meets the Corporate Tax

5. “Old Harberger” Versus “New Harberger” and the Structure of the Corporate Tax

6. The “Old View” Versus the “New View” of Dividend Taxation

7 Debt and Equity: Tradeoff Theory Versus the Miller Equilibrium

Part Three: The International Dimension

8. U.S. International Tax Rules: The Basics

9. International Tax Policy Dilemmas

Part Four: Where Do We Go From Here?

10. The Emerging Brave New World

11. Corporate Integration

12. Other Possible New Directions for the U.S. Corporate Tax

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