Taxation is a legal transfer of money from public to government revenue. Taxes collected by the government are intended to facilitate the development of projects that benefits the citizens and also supporting the activities of the government. Tax collection and tax management is a field that has a contention since majority of tax payers don’t trust the tax collectors even during the ancient days of Jesus as the bible states. The main objective of the study was to assess the challenges of decentralized revenue collection and its effects on local administration. The study aimed to establish the extent in which decentralization of revenue collection can promote community participation in the decision-making process by devolving powers and resources to the local level, strengthen responsibility and transparency by requiring that local authorities be directly accountable to the communities they serve by establishing a clear link between taxes paid and service delivery, enhance the response capacity and sensitivity of public administration to the local environment by placing the planning, financing, and management of service delivery at the delivery point, enhance and sustain local planning and management capacity as a means to promote economic development and poverty reduction and strengthen the efficacy and efficiency of service delivery. It was evident that there is a strong, and quite well-founded belief, that a large part of the tax collected will not be spent on the welfare of the public at large, but rather on the politicians’ personal needs/wants, or the needs/wants of these politicians’ favourites. Due to the above problem, people simply do not expect that paying taxes will lead to any increase in the quantity and quality of public goods and services provided by the state. Hence, they have nothing to gain from paying taxes. The researcher recommended that the government should make clear, credible promises for improvements and increases in public goods and services: infrastructure, public transportation, education, health, social security. It should show people that if they pay more through taxation, then their expenses will be reduced by the state, in some way, through cheaper education or healthcare, for example. Second, governments should be more transparent about how much tax is collected, from whom it is collected (geography, profession-wise), and where it is eventually spent. Third, ensure that filing in taxes is easy, and that help is available for those finding it difficult. Make tax evasion hard in the first place. Fourth, reduce the tax burden on the lower and middle classes. Fifth, increase the tax net to include untaxed and low
The birth of Bitcoin brings new concept to the currency issuance and circulation.Its characteristics of decentralization and full electronization challenge the current currency system.Theoretically,Bitcoin possesses all the attributes that the currency has,and it will become real legal currency in circulation as long as legal permission.The use of Bitcoin in circulation now will suffer legal issues such as lack of legal status and credit,difficulty in evidence collection and remedy,jurisdiction conflict and so on.The problems mentioned above could only be fundamentally solved if the authority accelerated legislation,established a uniform dispute settlement mechanism,speeded up the establishment of credit system,and enhanced supervision.
Bachelor's thesis is focused on digital currency Bitcoin, mainly on Bitcoin transactions and their attributes like speed, fees and safety. Main goals of this thesis are three, analysis of bitcoin buying possibilities in Czech Republic, comparison of Bitcoin transactions with common payment methods like bank transfers, credit card payment or PayPal, and analysis of number of merchants accepting bitcoin in time and discovery of trend from these data. This thesis is divided into theoretical and practical part. In theoretical part there are described basics of cryptography, which are necessary for understanding Bitcoin, and in depth description how Bitcoin works. Practical part is focused on fulfilment of described goals, besides that thesis is also addressing Bitcoin clients and comparison between most popular ones. Contribution of this bachelor's thesis is analysis of bitcoin buying possibilities in Czech Republic, comparing Bitcoin transactions with transactions of standard payment methods in terms of fees and time, and analysis of trend in number of merchants accepting bitcoin as one of the payment method.
In the existing threshold signature schemes,conspiracy attack is still a difficult problem to solved.To overcome the security weaknesses of Wang Bin's work and Wang Xin's work,a new scheme was proposed.In order to resist conspiracy attack,it utilized three ways: using model without a trusted part,it can eliminate authority cheating thoroughly and the security level was higher;adding random number and time stamp,it can prevent the attacker to recover the signer member's secret parameters and also to prevent the attack of disrupting protocol;using zero-knowledge proof verifiable method to confirm that the signer member had right secret parameters,so it can prevent the attacker to forge signature directly.The results show that this scheme is correct,and it can not only resist forgery attack and conspiracy attack,but also provide anonymity and traceability simultaneously.
Chaos-based Image/Signal Encryption
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Through theoretical analysis about multitask principal-agent model,this paper proposes that local governments which have much more decentralization but no proper constraint,not only have a competitive incentive to promote economic development,but also extend grabbing hand initiatively.That is to say,they will achieve the goal of financial revenue and maximize the governments' interests,and will deviate from the social optimum goal.This paper uses the panel data of 19 cities to test these hypotheses.Finally,the paper suggests that the decentralization system should improve and lateral restraint needs to be imposed on local governments,so as to institutionally limit the governments' profit-driven behavior and direct intervention degree in economy.
By using literature research,the combination of empirical and normative analysis,the damage of farmers' rights and interests caused by land finance factors and the countermeasures to protect farmers' rights and interests in the rural homestead replacement dominated by local government were discussed.The results showed that there are such phenomena as setting a rent through system to get as much as possible benefit and strong pushing means by administrative command etc,so improving fiscal decentralization and local government performance appraisal system must be done well in order to protect farmers' rights and interests.
Bitcoin is a new kind of money, which means a digital currency which can be used for commercial purposes. Over time, the trade has evolved from barter to the use of the precious metals as money, then to the coins with intrinsic value and to the symbol coins and later to the use of the electronic money, reaching at present to a virtual currency, created and used through the internet network. Bitcoin promises to its users getting high returns under conditions of low risk arising from transactions carried out instantly, without intermediary bank and almost no fees. At this moment, Bitcoin is still an experimental new currency, but in the future it can offer an alternative to previous costly systems and it can increase online business access to developing countries.
Bachelor's thesis is focused on digital currency Bitcoin, mainly on Bitcoin transactions and their attributes like speed, fees and safety. Main goals of this thesis are three, analysis of bitcoin buying possibilities in Czech Republic, comparison of Bitcoin transactions with common payment methods like bank transfers, credit card payment or PayPal, and analysis of number of merchants accepting bitcoin in time and discovery of trend from these data. This thesis is divided into theoretical and practical part. In theoretical part there are described basics of cryptography, which are necessary for understanding Bitcoin, and in depth description how Bitcoin works. Practical part is focused on fulfilment of described goals, besides that thesis is also addressing Bitcoin clients and comparison between most popular ones. Contribution of this bachelor's thesis is analysis of bitcoin buying possibilities in Czech Republic, comparing Bitcoin transactions with transactions of standard payment methods in terms of fees and time, and analysis of trend in number of merchants accepting bitcoin as one of the payment method.
There is a great demand for publicly verifiable encryption in key escrow,optimistic fair exchange,publicly verifiable secret sharing and secure multiparty computation,but the current schemes are either chosen plaintext secure or chosen ciphertext secure in the random oracle model,which obviously are not secure enough to be applied in the complicated circumstances.Based on the analysis of the current schemes and application of the reality,this paper proposed a new publicly verifiable encryption scheme by combining the CS encryption scheme with the non-interactive zero knowledge proof protocol.The new scheme enabled any third party other than the sender and receiver to verify the validity of the ciphertext,but leaked no information about the message.Finally,without using the random oracle,the adaptively chosen ciphertext security of the scheme is proved in the standard model.
Used the panel data of 18 cities in Henan Province during 2000～2010,two hypotheses-the fiscal decentralization hypothesis and the hypothesis of economic openness were tested.Through LSDV method,the analysis found that,during the period of economic construction,the degree of fiscal decentralization plays a positive role,and economic openness has no effect on economic construction expenditure.Meanwhile,during the public finances period,the increase in economic openness will lead to the increase in government social security expenditure,and fiscal decentralization has no effect on social security spending.results show that the shift of the ideal of public finance system is an optimistic outlook.
China has built financial management system based on tax distribution,but due to the unclear powers and financial expenditure responsibility between central governments and local governments,unrealized independent finance power of local governments,and transfer payment failing to solve the problem of regional financial equilibrium and so on,this system constrains the local governments achieving the advantage in the allocation of resources and meeting the demand of area residents preferences.From view of local governments,this paper attempts to analyze the existing problems in the financial system in China,and puts forward corresponding suggestions.
This bachelor's thesis focuses on the digital currency called Bitcoin. The theoretical part discusses the concept of money (its history, issuance, the gold standard, etc.) as well as central banking and local currencies. It also tackles the concept of Bitcoin itself, the way it functions, its advantages and disadvantages and its issuance (so-called mining). The practical part discusses whether or not it is possible to profit through bitcoin mining, by speculating on its relative value to the (US) dollar and if it is possible for Bitcoin to replace traditional payment systems and currencies in the future (or at least prove itself to be a potent competitor).
As a tool for cross-disciplinary collaboration, energy and emissions calculations were central as common reference point throughout the whole process studied here. Considering only the design phase, it is clear that particularly the energy account was useful in defining both the necessary amount of work and the methods of the collaborative work. One of the merits was its ability to force each participant onto neutral ground based on shared information and work requirements. The energy account served as a boundary object (Star 2010) in this way as it provided “something” around which to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries and something that could translate different disciplinary specialities into a mutually comparable success criterion: the primary energy factor. The primary energy factor was both the what and the why of this collaboration, simultaneously a process of creation and a guiding force. The effort that went into creating the energy account and collaboration in workshops, which were employed as a sort of management tool, were argued by some informants to have made the process ‘heavy on the nose’. This was largely due to design aspects and the signal effect, which was important for PH Kjørbo as a pilot project. As this was a pilot project, it has received a certain degree of special attention from all involved institutions. The participants describe the special requirements connected to this building as \n• trust in the concept,\n• broad participation in the project’s definition process,\n• trust between partners, and\n• high level decision making at the different partners’ companies to cater to an acceptable risk allocation for all parts.\nAccording to the respondents, the design process benefited much from the oversight of a dedicated process manager, a role that was served by one of the project’s senior architects. In fact, many respondents noted the exact point in time when the process manager exited the project was also the point when the project encountered problems. \nThe participants agree that “closeness” (in terms of frequent communication both face-to-face and by other means) between the central and defining actors in the project team was a key to success. Failures accrued once the distance between actors increased due to their involvement in other projects. According to respondents, one important role for a process manager in the later stages could have been as a liaison between project management levels (contractor) and subcontractors. Some problems that appeared in this phase involved the sheer disbelief shared by the subcontractors when they first became acquainted with the calculations, the functional demands, and the specifications that had resulted from the design process - a process they knew little about. This constituted a failure on behalf of the PH collaboration to translate the concept to the hired hands, which complicated the execution phase. \nContract frameworks were also mentioned as a contributing source of errors as turnkey contract frameworks dis-incentivised subcontractors from making order changes also after they were clearly deemed necessary by consulting engineers. This is not an unusual mode of contracting in the construction business from a traditional viewpoint and could perhaps prove to work better in the future as the concept matures along with the market. A greater level of detailing in the design phase is one way to address this. However, in light of the experiences gathered at PH Kjørbo, the question is whether a more collaborative framework could have been applied to allow subcontractors to identify and share in ZEB Project report 25-2015 Page 6 of 32 the risk taking with the main contractors and/or project owner - or, in fact, to take part in the social learning that occurs as actors make the project ‘their own’. One way to incentivise junior contractors to join in more time-consuming, perhaps less profitable, contract arrangements could be to highlight the skill and knowledge development benefits available for participants in such projects. This would, however, require some proof of concept to be sufficiently translated into a clear added value for\nsuppliers. At this juncture, the newly constructed Powerhouse is one such proof. In replicating elements of the Kjørbo project, it is likely that resources can be saved on design and parts of the pre-project phase. However, to avoid the amount of order changes seen in the execution of PH Kjørbo (especially for different projects), more resources must be spent on learning for junior contractors. \nFinally, the symbolic value that was characteristic of Powerhouse Kjørbo contributed to both its ability to be realised and concrete benefits for actors involved in the time after completion. Many have drawn parallels between PH Kjørbo and Tesla, implying that PH Kjørbo is for the building industry what that electric car is for the automotive industry. As many of the respondents emphasised, the building is a statement that says “it’s possible.” The goal had never been accomplished, let alone attempted, before, and success hinged on the project participants’ belief in that final statement. A radically different approach combined with an ambitious goal made that belief possible, and it was reinforced by the interdisciplinary work that was the basis of the project. This extra effort was a necessity in this project, but it might not be in the next. Some of it can most likely be implemented in other projects. However, as this report also demonstrates, picking pieces out of the success story PH Kjørbo may not yield equally impressive results because there is a connection between the pieces that is important for the whole building to succeed.\n1.2 Summary of part 2: Taking a zero emission office building in use\nThe second part of this report examined the early use phase of PH Kjørbo, which was undertaken by local actors with the tenant as well as the project team. Although it is clear that the planning and design phase and the technological solutions played important roles in the success of PH Kjørbo, the way in which the running-in period was handled contributed some crucial finishing touches to the users’ overall very positive experience with PH Kjørbo. Notwithstanding the technical calibrations themselves (which are outside the purview of this inquiry), the way user expectations were met by specific consideration of practical and cognitive aspects of the use of the building created a good use experience and not just an energy-saving machine. Great care was taken to prevent technical shortcomings from interfering with work and causing frustrations, even when it has compromised energy targets temporarily. A positive use experience was considered “elementary”, an attitude that, at least in theory, denied allowing money to become an issue in this pulling contest between energy efficiency and user experience. Challenges experienced in the running-in period overall were experienced by the tenant as lower or not above what was considered normal based on experience with previous moving processes. In PH Kjørbo the ventilation system was allowed to let temperatures drift more than in a normal building.\nHowever, this system also proved that indoor temperatures experienced as normal do not necessarily require them to stay consistently at “22.2 degrees” - in fact, a drift in temperature between 20-25 degrees was found to be perfectly acceptable by the occupants. Temperatures in the lower end of this range were considered cold by some but were manageable by providing information and handling practical and cognitive expectations - or, simply speaking, a sweater kept handy. Indoor temperatures in the top range or above, should they occur at all in the Nordic climate, are equally badly handled in most Norwegian buildings, according to the informants. Again, handling users’ expectations with care in this phase proved helpful in improving user acceptance. This same characteristic of the running-in period at PH Kjørbo was found when examining the acoustic issues posed by the extensive use of exposed concrete. Negative experiences were reported largely by ZEB Project report 25-2015 Page 7 of 32 users who were used to extremely silent conditions. Addressing the reasons for the design choices openly (thermal mass) allowed users to settle into their new surroundings. As one of the respondents noted, when viewing the experience of this particular building as a whole, the somewhat increased noise levels caused by scarce sound roofing due to a minimal ventilation system meant that the ventilation noise normally endured in other buildings was totally eliminated, but the indoor climate was still described as extremely good. The result was a sum of experiences that evidently surpassed any conventional building.\nPH Kjørbo shows that treating the user as a form of “sensor” and devoting resources to the “processing” of information from such “sensors” in the running-in period provides substantial insight into the user experience that is crucial for improving the use experience. At Kjørbo, user experiences were collected through the office link system by the office manager, who then bore witness for the users in the user forums that guided the work of the running-in team. This provided a unique data source for detecting the comfort threshold. When complaints started to come in, they could be addressed quickly - either through informing about the reasons or through actual technical fixes. According to our informants, at the time of the interviews, as issues were picked up, negotiated and solved, complaints began to disappear.
Provable data retention (PDR) is a technique which certain the integrity of data in storage outsourcing. In this paper we propose an efficient PDR protocol that prevent attacker in gaining information from multiple cloud storage node. Our technique is for distributed cloud storage and support the scalability of services and data migration. This technique Cooperative store and maintain the client's data on multi cloud storage. To insure the security of our technique we use zero-knowledge proof system, which satisfies zero-knowledge properties, knowledge soundness and completeness. We present a Cooperative PDR (CPDR) protocol based on hash index hierarchy and homomorphic authentication response. In order to optimize the performance of our technique we use a novel technique for selecting optimal parameter values to reduce the storage overhead and computation costs of client for service providers. Our experiment shows that our solution reflects less communication and computation costs in comparison to non- cooperative approaches. Keyword: provable, Data Retention, integrity, scalability, homomorphic, zero knowledge, storage outsourcing, multiple cloud, Cooperative, data Retention.
Lately,Canard et al.(CANARD S,JAMBERT A.Untraceability and profiling are not mutually exclusive [C]// TrustBus 2010:Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Trust,Privacy and Security in Digital Business,LNCS 6264.Berlin:Springer-Verlag,2010:117-128) introduced the notion of multi-service subscription and proposed several instantiations.Unfortunately,their systems only satisfied a weaker variant of anonymity called revocable-anonymity and they were not fit for services.To this end,a revised multi-service subscription system was put forward to extending Canard et al's system.The new system achieved pay-per-use subscriptions by incorporating the anonymous payment system raised by Liu et al.(LIU J K,AU M H,SUSILO W,et al.Enhancing location privacy for electric vehicles(at the right time).[2012-08-01].http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/342).To allow users to prove in zero-knowledge that their account balance is enough for making a payment for the required access,it also utilized the Peng-Bao range proof for small ranges.Furthermore,it was constructed on several 4-round perfect zero-knowledge proofs of knowledge,which were obtained by applying a technique by Cramer et al.to the underlying Sigma-protocols.Compared with typical systems in the literature,the new solution gains advantages in terms of security.Concretely,it can be proved secure in the standard model.Moreover,it matches the strongest level of three crucial security notions,such as inseparability for spendable tokens,anonymity for users,and zero-knowledge for underlying proof systems.
One of the most fundamental goals in cryptography is to design protocols that remain secure when adversarial participants can engage in arbitrary malicious behavior. In 1986, Goldreich, Micali, and Wigderson presented a powerful paradigm for designing such protocols: their approach reduced the task of designing secure protocols to designing protocols that only guarantee security against “honest-but-curious” participants. By making use of zero-knowledge proofs, the GMW paradigm enforces honest behavior without compromising secrecy. Over the past two decades, this approach has been the dominant paradigm for cryptographic protocol design.
Cloud Storage or storage outsourcing is a rising trend where the cloud storage service provides a comparably low-cost, scalable, position-independent platform for storing client’s data. This archival storage guarantees the authenticity of data on storage server, but does not guarantee for the tampering of data (modifications or deletions, to the data).Thus, the problem for proving the integrity of the data stored at the third party cloud service providers has increased its attention. This work defines a framework for the efficient construction of data possession at the cloud storage servers dynamically. This scheme is considered for a hybrid cloud in which multiple cloud storages servers are considered, based on a cryptographic technique Interactive Proof System-multi-proved Zero knowledge proof system. This system is based on homomorphic verifiable response from multiple cloud servers, and the stored data is indexed using collision resistant hash index hierarchy. This scheme satisfies the security properties of completeness, knowledge soundness, and zero-knowledge system. This work also presents an optimal method for minimizing the computation, communication costs of storage service providers.
У статті розкрито питання децентралізації фінансових ресурсів місцевими бюджетами України. Окреслюється чимало проблем цього процесу, зокрема акцентується увага на неузгодженості розрахункових показників Мінфіну та органів місцевого самоврядування, суттєвій дотаційності місцевих бюджетів, переважанні темпів зростання трансфертів над темпами зростання доходів у місцевих бюджетах, незначній частці місцевих податків і зборів у їх доходах, залежності органів місцевого самоврядування у прийнятті рішень та управлінні фінансовими ресурсами від центральних органів. У статті подано окремі рекомендації щодо усунення проблем децентралізації фінансових ресурсів місцевими бюджетами України (The article investigates the decentralization of fi nancial resources of Ukrainian local budgets. The author outlines a lot of problems in this process, particularly emphasizing the incompatibility of calculated indicators of the Ministry of Finance and local governments, considerably subsidized local budgets, the prevalence of the growth rate of transfers over the growth rate of incomes of local budgets, the small share of local taxes and duties in their incomes, the dependence of local governments on central government in decision making and fi nancial resource management. The article presents some recommendations to solve the problems connected with the decentralization of fi nancial resources of Ukrainian local budgets)
The purpose of this article is to compare systems of fiscal decentralization in EU member states according to selected quantitative criteria. The results indicate that a higher number of lower levels of government usually indicate a greater share of local finance; however, this finding does not confirm the inverse link. Although the structure of expenditures is similar, the shares of funds for the implementation of individual tasks differ significantly. On average, the countries allocate most funds to education, social security, healthcare, and administration, with only a quarter of the countries recording the same or higher amounts of revenues than expenditures. Most countries still cover the existing deficit through transfers from the central government, equalization schemes, or borrowed funds.