The April edition of CIPFA’s official journal, Public Money & Management, is now available online. The journal is available for free to CIPFA members and students alike.
Please see below for a taster of this month’s contributions:
Tax avoidance in government-owned firms
By Elisabetta Mafrolla
This article looks into government-owned firms and investigates their tendency to avoid corporate taxation. Government-owned firms work in a principal–agent–government setting, where the government is simultaneously the principal and the ‘patron’ of an affiliate agent (the manager) and determines the regulatory setting in which the firms operate. In the meantime, the government is in charge of monitoring tax compliance through the country’s revenue and customs service. Using an Italian empirical study, the author found that government-owned firms avoided taxation and that local government-owned firms were the most tax aggressive. This article has important messages for local authorities and also for central government.
Usefulness of consolidated government accounts: A comparative study
By Danny Chow
A rare empirical study that examines taken-for-granted themes in public sector accounting, such as the usefulness of consolidation, GAAP based systems and comparability. The study shows how universal accounting ideals can have problematic implementation and/or consequences in the context of the global public sector.
The price of fear: estimating the financial cost of bullying and harassment to the NHS in England
By Roger Kline and Duncan Lewis
The malevolence of bullying and harassment haunts the NHS in England with significant impacts to employee health, reduced productivity, elevated staff turnover and sickness absences as well as extremely costly financial settlements. Bullying of staff also leads to risks in patient safety. In their article, Kline and Lewis conservatively estimate the financial costs of bullying and harassment at £2.281 billion annually. By providing a broad template by which to measure the costs of bullying and harassment, their paper offers a framework for calculating the proclivity of these constructs to be viewed as everyday features of working in the national health sector.
Public Money & Management is CIPFA’s official journal and was launched by CIPFA nearly 40 years ago to bring research and practice together.
CIPFA members, students and staff can download their free edition with their MyCIPFA log in here.