Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The most complicated provisions of the Code apply to all taxpayers, including those of low and moderate incomes. Among those provisions are the credit provisions, some of which provide refundable credits. Taxpayers of low or moderate incomes are the least likely of taxpayers to obtain good advice and help in completing their returns. Yet, after receiving their refunds, they are also the most likely to be audited and to have to return their refunds plus penalties and interest. For many, this begins a process of ever increasing liabilities that can only be settled with the help of tax professionals who can aid in obtaining an offer in compromise or an installment agreement.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Russia has recently been experiencing a consumer credit boom as lending to households has been steadily increasing for the past four years. Despite the impressive growth rate, the consumer credit market in Russia is still in its infancy compared with mature Western market and even East European markets. One of the major obstacles to its further development is the lack of working credit bureaus. This paper details the process of emergence of consumer credit reporting and creation of credit bureaus in Russia using the evolutionary approach (Aldrich 1999). It focuses on the process of organizational emergence driven by nascent entrepreneurs who pursue strategies to gain knowledge and build legitimacy.
Pioneers of Russia’s credit card market could not mobilize forces to organize a credit bureau until after the real boom started in purchasing and installment consumer credit market in 2000-2001. This is in agreement with Pagano and Jappelli’s (2002) argument that credit bureaus are more likely to be organized in larger markets because the need for them becomes mores urgent. The real push for the creation of credit bureaus came when they were framed as a key element in the presidential housing program (to aid mortgage lending). This allowed for a new draft law to be quickly passed by Duma (generating regulatory legitimacy) and for the spilling of the discussion about credit bureaus into the popular press and public sphere to build moral legitimacy.
The paper analyzes several alternative models of credit bureaus as well as the struggles around their selection.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Credit crunch is not a new term. For many years in the UK the notion that the supply of credit would at some point dry up and impact on the real economy was the justification for state interventions to assist small firms in accessing finance. In short c

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The Imperialist Credit Culture/International Credit Consortium (ICC) has taken root and in hidden in the imperfections of the once powerful capitalist economic system. The ICC, while avoiding any risk of association for the “Moral Hazard” exercise control, unnoticed, from behind a vale of international cooperation (World Trade Organization - WTO) where the responsibilities for those countries populations are only the responsibility of their domestic governments; use these periphery and simi- periphery as labor/commodity sources. The Consumer market of the United States, part of the core economy, is now based upon consumption value and not labor value of the individuals in this market place – serves only as a source of credit value and neither of capital nor production at any level. “Creditism” has replaced not only the economic systems of the past but also is the driving force behind consumerism, debt accumulation, and pop-culture. For control over all aspects of society is the affect of a culture/pop-culture under the control of the I.C.C.. Also, due to this alien cultural control - normal operation and development of society has been halted – restricting world cultural development. This model “Creditism” does not invalidate past soc-economic, world-systems works, but rather includes them as valid and true expressions and observations from the perception (cultural experiences and knowledge) of each theorist; This enables a new all-inclusive social commentary to be constructed, in which all parts of the world society, world economy, and world culture are included.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We explore the transformation of consumer credit markets in France through the twentieth-century from a case study. The local, face-to-face credit market in Lens, northern France, developed against a background of immigration and so was not based on pre-existing social networks but on the attractiveness of credit and of the goods on offer. The entrepreneurs involved innovated by connecting together the Parisian textile networks and demand from working-class Polish families. They profited from their belonging to both Jewish and Polish communities. This credit was expensive, carried no interest, was inseparable from the goods sold and the home service provided, and was not understood by the authorities, staying in a black hole of state control. Two processes put an end to it: (i) the disappearance of a way of life, of the captive customer base, complicating face-to-face identification and requiring use of the state’s means of identification (vital statistics records, identity cards)—with the state guaranteeing the identity of those involved on the market and extending business beyond networks of acquaintances—and (ii) legislative action and reorganization of credit activities to the advantage of commercial banks. The specificity of French credit market is that this is the state which first shaped markets in a move to standardize the economy. This formalization was extended by banks that progressively provided credit regardless of any personal relations.