Designing Fiscal Redistribution: The Role of Universal and Targeted Transfers

Designing Fiscal Redistribution: The Role of Universal and Targeted Transfers PDF Author: Mr.David Coady
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513547046
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 27

Get Book Here

Book Description
There is a growing debate on the relative merits of universal and targeted social assistance transfers in achieving income redistribution objectives. While the benefits of targeting are clear, i.e., a larger poverty impact for a given transfer budget or lower fiscal cost for a given poverty impact, in practice targeting also comes with various costs, including incentive, administrative, social and political costs. The appropriate balance between targeted and universal transfers will therefore depend on how countries decide to trade-off these costs and benefits as well as on the potential for redistribution through taxes. This paper discusses the trade-offs that arise in different country contexts and the potential for strengthening fiscal redistribution in advanced and developing countries, including through expanding transfer coverage and progressive tax financing.

Designing Fiscal Redistribution: The Role of Universal and Targeted Transfers

Designing Fiscal Redistribution: The Role of Universal and Targeted Transfers PDF Author: Mr.David Coady
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513547046
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 27

Get Book Here

Book Description
There is a growing debate on the relative merits of universal and targeted social assistance transfers in achieving income redistribution objectives. While the benefits of targeting are clear, i.e., a larger poverty impact for a given transfer budget or lower fiscal cost for a given poverty impact, in practice targeting also comes with various costs, including incentive, administrative, social and political costs. The appropriate balance between targeted and universal transfers will therefore depend on how countries decide to trade-off these costs and benefits as well as on the potential for redistribution through taxes. This paper discusses the trade-offs that arise in different country contexts and the potential for strengthening fiscal redistribution in advanced and developing countries, including through expanding transfer coverage and progressive tax financing.

Fiscal Redistribution and Social Welfare

Fiscal Redistribution and Social Welfare PDF Author: Mr.David Coady
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1484398084
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 30

Get Book Here

Book Description
Fiscal policy is a key tool for achieving distributional objectives in advanced economies. This paper embeds the discussion of fiscal redistribution within the standard social welfare framework, which lends itself to a transparent and practical evaluation of the extent and determinants of fiscal redistribution. Differences in fiscal redistribution are decomposed into differences in the magnitude of transfers (fiscal effort) and in the progressivity of transfers (fiscal progressivity). Fiscal progressivity is further decomposed into differences in the distribution of transfers across income groups (targeting performance) and in the social welfare returns to targeting due to varying initial levels of income inequality (targeting returns). This decomposition provides a clear distinction between the concepts of progressivity and targeting, and clarifies the relationship between them. For illustrative purposes, the framework is applied to data for 28 EU countries to determine the factors explaining differences in their fiscal redistribution and to discuss patterns in fiscal redistribution highlighted in the literature.

Personal Income Tax Progressivity: Trends and Implications

Personal Income Tax Progressivity: Trends and Implications PDF Author: Claudia Gerber
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1484383087
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 24

Get Book Here

Book Description
This paper discusses how the structure of the tax system affects its progressivity. It suggests a measure of progressive capacity of tax systems, based on the Kakwani index, but independent of pre-tax income distributions. Using this and other progressivity measures, the paper (i) documents a decline in progressivity over the last decades and (ii) examines the relationship between progressivity and economic growth. Regressions do not reveal a significant impact of progressivity on growth, suggesting that efficiency costs of progressivity may be small—at least for degrees of progressivity observed in the sample.

Progressive Consumption Taxation

Progressive Consumption Taxation PDF Author: Robert Carroll
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0844743941
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
The authors observe that consumption taxation is superior to income taxation because it does not penalize saving and investment and propose that the U.S. income tax system be completely replaced by a progressive consumption tax. They argue that the X tax, developed by the late David Bradford, offers the best form of progressive consumption taxation for the United States and outline concrete proposals for the X tax's treatment of numerous specific economic issues.

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.

Tax Policy and Inclusive Growth

Tax Policy and Inclusive Growth PDF Author: Khaled Abdel-Kader
Publisher: INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
ISBN: 9781513561561
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 38

Get Book Here

Book Description
This paper discusses the theory and practice of tax design to achieve an efficient and equitable outcome, i.e. in support of inclusive growth. It starts with a discussion of the key principles from tax theory to guide practical tax design. Then, it elaborates on more granular tax policy, discussing key choices in the structure of the personal income tax on labor and capital income, taxes on wealth, the corporate income tax, and consumption taxes. The paper concludes by highlighting the political economy considerations of the issues with concrete recommedtions as to how to implement tax reform.

Fiscal Regimes for Extractive Industries—Design and Implementation

Fiscal Regimes for Extractive Industries—Design and Implementation PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1498340067
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 82

Get Book Here

Book Description
Better designed and implemented fiscal regimes for oil, gas, and mining can make a substantial contribution to the revenue needs of many developing countries while ensuring an attractive return for investors, according to a new policy paper from the International Monetary Fund. Revenues from extractive industries (EIs) have major macroeconomic implications. The EIs account for over half of government revenues in many petroleum-rich countries, and for over 20 percent in mining countries. About one-third of IMF member countries find (or could find) resource revenues “macro-critical” – especially with large numbers of recent new discoveries and planned oil, gas, and mining developments. IMF policy advice and technical assistance in the field has massively expanded in recent years – driven by demand from member countries and supported by increased donor finance. The paper sets out the analytical framework underpinning, and key elements of, the country-specific advice given. Also available in Arabic: ????? ??????? ?????? ???????? ???????????: ??????? ???????? Also available in French: Régimes fiscaux des industries extractives: conception et application Also available in Spanish: Regímenes fiscales de las industrias extractivas: Diseño y aplicación

Tax Systems

Tax Systems PDF Author: Joel Slemrod
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262319012
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Get Book Here

Book Description
An approach to taxation that goes beyond an emphasis on tax rates to consider such aspects as administration, compliance, and remittance. Despite its theoretical elegance, the standard optimal tax model has significant limitations. In this book, Joel Slemrod and Christian Gillitzer argue that tax analysis must move beyond the emphasis on optimal tax rates and bases to consider such aspects of taxation as administration, compliance, and remittance. Slemrod and Gillitzer explore what they term a tax-systems approach, which takes tax evasion seriously; revisits the issue of remittance, or who writes the check to cover tax liability (employer or employee, retailer or consumer); incorporates administrative and compliance costs; recognizes a range of behavioral responses to tax rates; considers nonstandard instruments, including tax base breadth and enforcement effort; and acknowledges that tighter enforcement is sometimes a more socially desirable way to raise revenue than an increase in statutory tax rates. Policy makers, Slemrod and Gillitzer argue, would be well advised to recognize the interrelationship of tax rates, bases, enforcement, and administration, and acknowledge that tax policy is really tax-systems policy.

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.

Tax By Design

Tax By Design PDF Author: Stuart Adam
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199553742
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 552

Get Book Here

Book Description
Based on the findings of a commission chaired by James Mirrlees, this volume presents a coherent picture of tax reform whose aim is to identify the characteristics of a good tax system for any open developed economy, assess the extent to which the UK tax system conforms to these ideals, and recommend how it might be reformed in that direction.