Income tax systems commonly contain a broad range of tax incentives. These incentives are tax expenditures as they are an indirect form of government spending designed to benefit targeted taxpayers. Based on the income tax formula, the principal ways that tax incentives may be provided are by granting special exemptions, deductions, tax offsets or reduced tax rates. This chapter examines a number of intricate tax incentive programs that have been established by the Australian Government to encourage certain forms of investment. In particular, it examines various programs that support investment in start-ups and other entrepreneurial ‘small and medium enterprises’ (‘SMEs’). These entities have the potential for rapid growth and play a key role in Australia’s innovation system. However, because of their risky nature, they often find it difficult to borrow money and need to rely heavily on equity finance. This form of finance is known as ‘venture capital’ and comes from two main sources: angel investors (ie wealthy entrepreneurs and business people) and venture capital funds (ie funds run by professional fund managers).

To get to a net-zero-carbon economy, we will need a new generation of sustainable technologies and the financing infrastructure to channel novel ideas into viable products and companies.

Federal tax policy offered dependency tax expenditures to taxpayers who helped support their aging parents. This chapter analyzes the 1966 Congressional hearing investigating the adequacy of these federal tax incentives. The hearings occurred during a period of tax reform focused on reducing the number of tax expenditures available through the tax code. The parent’s dependency was not presumed but had to be documented, often resulting in intrusive IRS audits and limited access to benefits. Drawing on letters sent to the committee, this chapter analyzes the voices of adult children and the parents they supported. Their correspondence underscores the hardship that parental support exacted on adult children and their priorities regarding tax benefits for supporting parents. These letters also show the limited options available to parents in need. Relatively minor changes resulted from the hearings, but they illuminate how ideas of dependency and family operated in tax benefits.

Throughout our surveys and interviews, a common theme emerges: people want jobs that go to workers who live in their communities. So what happens when clean energy jobs are not local jobs? Opposition from communities, unions, and elected officials can ensue. But what can we do? This chapter tells the story of unions in Minnesota – unions that represent both fossil and clean energy workers – that tried not a strategy of darkness and denial but instead a strategy of sunlight and support. They worked with state regulators to have clean energy project proposals commit to disclose to the public how many local workers they hire. We combine this episode with internal union surveys and our surveys of elected officials and the public to show both the promises of transparency but also its limits.

Tensions soar to new heights between developing and developed countries in the debate over double taxation of foreign investment at the Fourth Session of the Fiscal Commission and later in the Economic and Social Council. The compromise resolution breaks no new ground in allowing developing countries more source taxing rights but is used by industry in Britain to support the reduction of British taxation of income arising from investments in underdeveloped countries.