This study is aimed at the examination of rail infrastructure state funding, its pre-conditions, the assessment of its needs and factors that can impact its amount and forms. Mainly, the Latvian railway case was examined; however, it was found that in the all Baltic States the state funding for rail infrastructure should cover subsequences of internal failures and external regulations of the rail market and its amount depends on state facility to adopt political programs to internal market terms.
This study attempts to understand the impact of the EU transport policy on rail infrastructure primarily for freight transportation. The study also gives insights into railway economical features, including competitiveness and financing issues. The "market can bear" level assessment methodology offered as results that may be used for railway charging for freight services based on efficient, transparent and nondiscriminatory principles as stated in the existing EU rail transport policy. The findings were obtained using experts' focus interview method. It can be concluded that for the European 1520mm railway with primarily freight transportation balanced charges can be achieved when the state compensates expenses of the infrastructure manager not covered by charges of other modes of transport as well as disadvantages of legal and administrative requirements in the railway sector.
A variety of collaborative economy business models are rapidly emerging and growing across the world, calling for changes in traditional tax policies. Although the collaborative economy shows a rapid growth, the review of the existing taxation practices within the collaborative economy reveals inefficiency, associated mainly with the blurred boundaries among professional and non-professional service providers, with the avoidance to cooperate from collaborative platforms and with the fragmentation in taxation regimes among EU member states and worldwide. The aim of this paper is to investigate tax challenges arising from the collaborative economy and to offer a comprehensive model of the tax system development in the collaborative economy. Accordingly, this paper demonstrates the results of systematization of the collected task-oriented data and the description of the proposed model developed by the generalisation approach. Data collection and systematization methods have been used. The authors conclude that the taxation of the collaborative economy must be investigated on the global level by using collaborative economy instruments (platforms and scoring). The role of awareness of both service providers and tax administrations is stressed in the discussion part.
Transfer pricing (TP) is based on many principles – the essential one is the Arm´s Length Principle (ALP). In this respect, the term “associated persons” is of crucial importance: associated persons must be involved in transactions in order for the ALP to be applied. The aim of the paper is to contribute to existing comparative analysis of TP rules – specifically, to provide a critical analysis of the term “associated persons” as prescribed by domestic law in Brazil, the Czech Republic, and Latvia. The key goals of the research conducted were to provide a comprehensive picture of the variety of definitions, to indicate relationships between international law and domestic law, and last, but not least, to highlight various concepts of the term “associated persons” and to identify problematic aspects connected with the interpretation of the definitions and the applications of the related rules. The study, which is based on qualitative research, is exploratory and interpretative in its nature. Its results present a background for further research and point to the fragmentation of law on TP with respect to the investigated issue. On the basis of the results of the comparative study one can conclude significant differences among, and fragmentation in, the definitions of the term “associated persons” both in respect of the number of categories established and in respect of the absence of the autonomy of the definitions of the term “associated persons” as provided by public law (especially by income tax acts). At the same time one can conclude the same position regarding the application of double tax treaties in all the countries for which the study was carried out.
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