From Optimal Tax Theory to Tax Policy

From Optimal Tax Theory to Tax Policy PDF Author: Robin Boadway
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262300931
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book Here

Book Description
An economist examines the evolution of optimal tax analysis and its influence on tax policy design. Many things inform a country's choice of tax system, including political considerations, public opinion, bureaucratic complexities, and ideas drawn from theoretical analysis. In this book, Robin Boadway examines the role of optimal tax analysis in informing and influencing tax policy design. Scholars of public economics formulate models of optimal tax-transfer systems based on normative principles that reflect efficiency and equity considerations. They use that analysis to form views about the optimal design or reform of actual tax systems that are much more complicated than their models. Boadway argues that there is an important symbiosis between ideas drawn from normative tax analysis and tax policies actually enacted. Ideas germinated by normative analyses have led to the widespread adoption of the value-added tax, the use of refundable tax credits, and various business tax reforms. Other ideas provide rationales for existing features of tax systems, including the tax treatment of retirement savings and human capital investment. Boadway charts the evolution of optimal tax analysis and discusses the lessons it holds for tax policy. He describes the theoretical challenges posed by recent findings in such fields as behavioral economics and social choice and considers how optimal tax analysis might adapt to these new paradigms. His analysis offers a timely assessment of the role that optimal tax theory has played in establishing the principles that continue to inform tax policy.

From Optimal Tax Theory to Tax Policy

From Optimal Tax Theory to Tax Policy PDF Author: Robin Boadway
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262300931
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book Here

Book Description
An economist examines the evolution of optimal tax analysis and its influence on tax policy design. Many things inform a country's choice of tax system, including political considerations, public opinion, bureaucratic complexities, and ideas drawn from theoretical analysis. In this book, Robin Boadway examines the role of optimal tax analysis in informing and influencing tax policy design. Scholars of public economics formulate models of optimal tax-transfer systems based on normative principles that reflect efficiency and equity considerations. They use that analysis to form views about the optimal design or reform of actual tax systems that are much more complicated than their models. Boadway argues that there is an important symbiosis between ideas drawn from normative tax analysis and tax policies actually enacted. Ideas germinated by normative analyses have led to the widespread adoption of the value-added tax, the use of refundable tax credits, and various business tax reforms. Other ideas provide rationales for existing features of tax systems, including the tax treatment of retirement savings and human capital investment. Boadway charts the evolution of optimal tax analysis and discusses the lessons it holds for tax policy. He describes the theoretical challenges posed by recent findings in such fields as behavioral economics and social choice and considers how optimal tax analysis might adapt to these new paradigms. His analysis offers a timely assessment of the role that optimal tax theory has played in establishing the principles that continue to inform tax policy.

The New Dynamic Public Finance

The New Dynamic Public Finance PDF Author: Narayana R. Kocherlakota
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400835275
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book Here

Book Description
Optimal tax design attempts to resolve a well-known trade-off: namely, that high taxes are bad insofar as they discourage people from working, but good to the degree that, by redistributing wealth, they help insure people against productivity shocks. Until recently, however, economic research on this question either ignored people's uncertainty about their future productivities or imposed strong and unrealistic functional form restrictions on taxes. In response to these problems, the new dynamic public finance was developed to study the design of optimal taxes given only minimal restrictions on the set of possible tax instruments, and on the nature of shocks affecting people in the economy. In this book, Narayana Kocherlakota surveys and discusses this exciting new approach to public finance. An important book for advanced PhD courses in public finance and macroeconomics, The New Dynamic Public Finance provides a formal connection between the problem of dynamic optimal taxation and dynamic principal-agent contracting theory. This connection means that the properties of solutions to principal-agent problems can be used to determine the properties of optimal tax systems. The book shows that such optimal tax systems necessarily involve asset income taxes, which may depend in sophisticated ways on current and past labor incomes. It also addresses the implications of this new approach for qualitative properties of optimal monetary policy, optimal government debt policy, and optimal bequest taxes. In addition, the book describes computational methods for approximate calculation of optimal taxes, and discusses possible paths for future research.

The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics

The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics PDF Author: Louis Kaplow
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069114821X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 494

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics presents a unified conceptual framework for analyzing taxation--the first to be systematically developed in several decades. An original treatment of the subject rather than a textbook synthesis, the book contains new analysis that generates novel results, including some that overturn long-standing conventional wisdom. This fresh approach should change thinking, research, and teaching for decades to come. Building on the work of James Mirrlees, Anthony Atkinson and Joseph Stiglitz, and subsequent researchers, and in the spirit of classics by A. C. Pigou, William Vickrey, and Richard Musgrave, this book steps back from particular lines of inquiry to consider the field as a whole, including the relationships among different fiscal instruments. Louis Kaplow puts forward a framework that makes it possible to rigorously examine both distributive and distortionary effects of particular policies despite their complex interactions with others. To do so, various reforms--ranging from commodity or estate and gift taxation to regulation and public goods provision--are combined with a distributively offsetting adjustment to the income tax. The resulting distribution-neutral reform package holds much constant while leaving in play the distinctive effects of the policy instrument under consideration. By applying this common methodology to disparate subjects, The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics produces significant cross-fertilization and yields solutions to previously intractable problems.

The Economics of Taxation

The Economics of Taxation PDF Author: Bernard SalaniƩ
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262194860
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description
A graduate-level introduction to the economic theories of taxation.

Savings and Bequests

Savings and Bequests PDF Author: Toshiaki Tachibanaki
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472104987
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
How do bequests explain differences in savings behavior between countries?

Money in the Utility Function: An Empirical Implementation

Money in the Utility Function: An Empirical Implementation PDF Author: James M. Poterba
Publisher: Palala Press
ISBN: 9781379111283
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 56

Get Book Here

Book Description
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

A Contribution to the Pure Theory of Taxation

A Contribution to the Pure Theory of Taxation PDF Author: Roger Guesnerie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521629560
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book investigates the way in which tax systems affect economic efficiency and the distribution of welfare. It examines within a unified framework questions that are usually treated in different areas of the literature: institutional economics, positive economics, normative economics, and political economics. It adheres to the rigorous standards of pure theory while paying careful attention to the policy relevance of the arguments. Tax systems are viewed as information extracting devices that generate sets of equilibria of complex geometry. A tax reform methodology is proposed that sheds light on optimal taxes. Social conflicts in the determination of taxes are shown to have effects on social cohesion.

Optimal Redistributive Taxation

Optimal Redistributive Taxation PDF Author: Matti Tuomala
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198753411
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 506

Get Book Here

Book Description
Tax systems raise large amounts of revenue for funding public sector's activities, and tax/transfer policy, together with public provision of education, health care, and social services, play a crucial role in treating the symptoms and the causes of poverty. The normative analysis is crucial for tax/transfer design because it makes it possible to assess separately how changes in the redistributive criterion of the government, and changes in the size of the behavioural responses to taxes and transfers, affect the optimal tax/transfer system. Optimal tax theory provides a way of thinking rigorously about these trade-offs. Written primarily for graduate students and researchers, this volume is intended as a textbook and research monograph, connecting optimal tax theory to tax policy. It comments on some policy recommendations of the Mirrlees Review, and builds on the authors work on public economics, optimal tax theory, behavioural public economics, and income inequality. The book explains in depth the Mirrlees model and presents various extensions of it. The first set of extensions considers changing the preferences for consumption and work: behavioural-economic modifications (such as positional externalities, prospect theory, paternalism, myopic behaviour and habit formation) but also heterogeneous work preferences (besides differences in earnings ability). The second set of modifications concerns the objective of the government. The book explains the differences in optimal redistributive tax systems when governments - instead of maximising social welfare - minimise poverty or maximise social welfare based on rank order or charitable conservatism social welfare functions. The third set of extensions considers extending the Mirrlees income tax framework to allow for differential commodity taxes, capital income taxation, public goods provision, public provision of private goods, and taxation commodities that generate externalities. The fourth set of extensions considers incorporating a number of important real-word extensions such as tagging of tax schedules to certain groups of tax payers. In all extensions, the book illustrates the main mechanisms using advanced numerical simulations.

Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation

Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation PDF Author: William G. Gale
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780815719861
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 544

Get Book Here

Book Description
Although estate and gift taxes raise a small fraction of federal revenues, they have become sources of increasing political controversy. This book is designed to inform the current policy debate and build a conceptual basis for future scholarship. The book contains eleven original studies of estate and gift taxes, along with discussants' comments. The essays provide background and historical information; analyze the optimal taxation of estates and gifts; examine the effects of the tax on charitable contributions, saving behavior, the distribution and level of wealth, tax avoidance and tax evasion; and explore the effects of alternatives to estate taxation.

Taxation in Theory and Practice

Taxation in Theory and Practice PDF Author: George R. Zodrow
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
ISBN: 9789811205132
Category : Capital levy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Optimal tax reform : transitional issues in implementing tax reform -- Implementing tax reform -- Optimal tax reform in the presence of adjustment costs -- Grandfather rules and the theory of optimal tax reform -- Consumption tax reform: changes in business equity and housing prices / (with John W. Diamond) -- Consumption taxation -- Should capital income be subject to consumption-based taxation? -- A hybrid consumption-based direct tax proposed for Bolivia / (with Charles E. McLure, Jr.) -- U.S. Supreme Court unanimously chooses substance over form in foreign tax credit case : implications of the PPL decision for the creditability of cash-flow taxes / (with Charles E. McLure, Jr. and Jack Mintz) -- Taxation, uncertainty and the choice of a consumption tax base -- Optimal commodity taxation of traditional and electronic commerce income tax reform -- Treasury I and the Tax Reform Act of 1986 : the economics and politics of tax reform / (with Charles E. McLure, Jr.) -- The windfall recapture tax : issues of theory and design -- Balancing act: weighing the factors affecting the taxation of capital income in a small open economy / (with Margaret McKeehan) -- State and local tax policy -- Revenue options for the state of texas -- The new view of the property tax : a reformulation / (with Peter Mieszkowski) -- The property tax as a capital tax : a room with three views -- Intrajurisdictional capitalization and the incidence of the property tax -- Tax competition -- Pigou, Tiebout, property taxation and the under-provision of local public goods / (with Peter Mieszkowski) -- Capital mobility and capital tax competition -- Tax competition and the efficiency of "benefit-related" business taxes / (with Elisabeth Gugl).