Dutch Personal Income Tax Reform 2001: An Exceptional Position for Owner-occupied Housing

This paper examines how personal income taxation has changed across countries and whether and how this has affected the taxation of owner-occupied dwellings. It presents a partial analysis as it focuses on imputed rent taxation and the mortgage interest deduction. Furthermore, the paper places housing taxation in a wider context by describing different benchmarks which could be used to assess the taxation of owner-occupied housing in different types of personal income tax. These international and theoretical points-of-departure are used to evaluate the taxation of owner-occupied housing in the Netherlands. The paper concludes that all along political arguments have conquered theoretical premises to the advantage of the owner occupier in comparison to the private landlord. It also concludes that the theoretical base in 2001 has become so weak that owner-occupied housing is in an exceptional position in comparison with other private wealth thus becoming an easy victim for future tax savings.     

Book reviews

A Fourth Way? Privatization, Property and the Emergence of New Market Economies. Gregory S. Alexander & Grazyna Skapska (Eds). London, Routledge, 1994, xxiii + 336 pp., ISBN 0415906970 (HB), 0415906989 (PB)

From Public Housing to the Social Market. Rental Policy Strategies in Comparative Perspective. Jim Kemeny. London and New York, Routledge, 1995, 194 pp., £40.00

European Housing Finance. Single Market or Mosaic?. Will Bartlett & Glen Bramley (Eds). Oxford, The Alden Press, School for Advanced Urban Studies (SAUS) publication 12 (Bristol) 1994, 282 pp., £19.95, paperback, ISBN 1 873575 63 7

Housing, Financial Markets and the Wider Economy. David Miles. Chichester, John Wiley & Sons, 1994, 228 pp., £35.00

Women in the Housing Service. Marion Brion. London, Routledge, 1994, ISBN 0 415 08094 £45.00 Hardback

Slippery Customers: Estate Agents, The Public and Regulation. Michael Clarke, David Smith & Michael McConville. London, Blackstone Press, 1994, 295 pp., £19.95     

Housing Equity Withdrawal in Australia: Prevalence,Patterns and Motivations in Mid-to-late Life

In an era of population ageing, the primary home is increasingly viewed as a personal resource that can perform a pension role in retirement. This article assesses the extent to which Australians aged 45 years and over withdraw housing equity through in situ mortgage equity withdrawal (MEW), downsizing and selling up. We find that the incidence of housing equity withdrawal has increased over the last decade despite a global financial crisis. MEW is the dominant form of equity release among those under pension age, while downsizing or selling up is more frequent among those above pension age. Downsizing and selling up are more likely to be prompted by adverse life events than MEW. Selling up is typically an option of last resort. Our findings offer insights into important debates around homeownership societies and the welfare role performed by owner-occupied housing in mid-to-late life.     

Impact of breakfast on daily energy intake - an analysis of absolute versus relative breakfast calories

Objective  

The role of breakfast energy in total daily energy intake is a matter of debate. Acute feeding experiments demonstrated that high breakfast energy leads to greater overall intake supported by cross-sectional data of a free-living population. On the other hand, a large intraindividual analysis has indicated that a high proportion of breakfast to overall intake is associated with lower daily energy intake. To evaluate these apparently contradictory results in greater detail both ways of analysis were applied to the same data set of dietary records.     

Sex differences in left-handedness: A meta-analysis of 144 studies.

Human handedness, a marker for language lateralization in the brain, continues to attract great research interest. A widely reported but not universal finding is a greater male tendency toward left-handedness. Here the authors present a meta-analysis of k = 144 studies, totaling N = 1,787,629 participants, the results of which demonstrate that the sex difference is both significant and robust. The overall best estimate for the male to female odds ratio was 1.23 (95% confidence interval = 1.19, 1.27). The widespread observation of this sex difference is consistent with it being related to innate characteristics of sexual differentiation, and its observed magnitude places an important constraint on current theories of handedness. In addition, the size of the sex difference was significantly moderated by the way in which handedness was assessed (by writing hand or by other means), the location of testing, and the year of publication of the study, implicating additional influences on its development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Computational implementation of a systems prioritization methodology for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant: a preliminary example

A systems prioritization methodology (SPM) is under development for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The SPM is based on a large numerical integration problem that must be repeatedly evaluated to determine compliance probabilities associated with different experimental programs and design modifications. Due to the complexity and computational cost of the underlying integration problem, the implementation of the SPM must be planned very carefully. This presentation describes a preliminary application of the SPM, designated SPM-l, performed to provide insights to facilitate the development and implementation of the methodology. Topics illustrated by SPM-1 include definition of probability spaces on which the SPM is based, use of Latin hypercube sampling and simple random sampling to integrate over different probability spaces, selection of mechanistic calculations to be performed, efficient use of the limited number of mechanistic calculations that can be performed, and assembly of many individual calculations into a complete analysis.