The Federal Planning Bureau’s user charter was approved and signed by the Executive Council in June 2010. It covers a number of commitments concerning the term of treatment, office opening hours, publication distribution and the evaluation of services offered.
Monthly evolution of the consumer price index and of the so-called health index, which is used for the price indexation of wages, social benefits and house-rent.
This Working Paper describes the methodological changes in the Modal and Time Choice module of the PLANET model, further to the endogenisation of short see shipping for international transport and the splitting of the Bus-Tram-Metro aggregate into three distinct transport modes.
In the face of increased exposure to global economic pressures in general, and increased wage competition within the EU in particular, calls for framing the free wage negotiations at industry and firm level into a more institutionalised arrangement had grown louder in Belgium in the late 1980s. As a result, the Law of 26 July 1996 on employment and competitiveness came into effect. In a bid to internalise the international economic environment, the law entrenches the biennial wage negotiations between labour unions and employers into a wage norm. It defines anticipated nominal foreign wages as the upper bound for wage negotiations in Belgium.
The compliance costs of private taxpayers are not only affected by the tax law itself but also by its implementation through the tax authorities. In the following paper we analyze the effect of administrative actions on the compliance costs of private businesses. We demonstrate in a theoretical model that compliance costs may partially be interpreted as externalities of authority behavior. As a result we expect a ”shifting” of administrative cost burdens from the tax administration to private taxpayers, what implies an economically inefficient outcome. Based on Belgian survey data, we find empirical evidence for the elucidated relationship. We give an quantitative estimate for the accordant effects and demonstrate, which activities of the administration are the most important cost drivers. Furthermore, we find empirical support that the effect of administrative issues is independent from the impact of the tax law itself.
