The Welfare Cost of Distortions in the United States Tax System PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Welfare Cost of Distortions in the United States Tax System PDF full book. Access full book title The Welfare Cost of Distortions in the United States Tax System by Charles L. Ballard. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Charles L. Ballard
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Equilibrium (Economics)
Languages : en
Pages : 54
Get Book Here
Book Description
Using a general equilibrium model of the United States economy, we examine the combined welfare cost of all taxes in the U.S. revenue system. We find that the welfare losses caused by distortionary taxation can be very large, both on average and at the margin. The marginal welfare loss to consumers from raising an additional dollar of revenue is in the range of 34 cents to 48 cents, depending on certain elasticities. This has very important implications for cost-benefit analysis. If a public project must be financed by distortionary taxes which cause dead-weight loss, this excess burden must be taken into account when we decide whether to undertake the project. Our calculations indicate that the marginal deadweight loss is between one-third and one-half of marginal revenues. This large wedge could cause us to approve many fewer projects than we would approve if we were to use the simple condition that the sum of the marginal rates of substitution should equal the marginal rate of transformation. The average deadweight loss per dollar of revenue is smaller than the marginal deadweight loss, but it is still substantial. We estimate that the present value of the gain from replacing the distortionary tax system with certain lump sum taxes would be in the range of $1.8 trillion to $3.1 trillion, or 13 cents to 22 cents per dollar of revenue. The gains would be about 60 percent as great if the existing system were replaced with a proportional income tax. Replacing the existing system with a consumption-type value-added tax would give even greater gains than those from switching to a proportional income tax.
Author: Charles L. Ballard
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Equilibrium (Economics)
Languages : en
Pages : 54
Get Book Here
Book Description
Using a general equilibrium model of the United States economy, we examine the combined welfare cost of all taxes in the U.S. revenue system. We find that the welfare losses caused by distortionary taxation can be very large, both on average and at the margin. The marginal welfare loss to consumers from raising an additional dollar of revenue is in the range of 34 cents to 48 cents, depending on certain elasticities. This has very important implications for cost-benefit analysis. If a public project must be financed by distortionary taxes which cause dead-weight loss, this excess burden must be taken into account when we decide whether to undertake the project. Our calculations indicate that the marginal deadweight loss is between one-third and one-half of marginal revenues. This large wedge could cause us to approve many fewer projects than we would approve if we were to use the simple condition that the sum of the marginal rates of substitution should equal the marginal rate of transformation. The average deadweight loss per dollar of revenue is smaller than the marginal deadweight loss, but it is still substantial. We estimate that the present value of the gain from replacing the distortionary tax system with certain lump sum taxes would be in the range of $1.8 trillion to $3.1 trillion, or 13 cents to 22 cents per dollar of revenue. The gains would be about 60 percent as great if the existing system were replaced with a proportional income tax. Replacing the existing system with a consumption-type value-added tax would give even greater gains than those from switching to a proportional income tax.
Author: Joseph J. Cordes
Publisher: The Urban Insitute
ISBN: 9780877667520
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 522
Get Book Here
Book Description
"From adjusted gross income to zoning and property taxes, the second edition of The Encyclopedia of Taxation and Tax Policy offers the best and most complete guide to taxes and tax-related issues. More than 150 tax practitioners and administrators, policymakers, and academics have contributed. The result is a unique and authoritative reference that examines virtually all tax instruments used by governments (individual income, corporate income, sales and value-added, property, estate and gift, franchise, poll, and many variants of these taxes), as well as characteristics of a good tax system, budgetary issues, and many current federal, state, local, and international tax policy issues. The new edition has been completely revised, with 40 new topics and 200 articles reflecting six years of legislative changes. Each essay provides the generalist with a quick and reliable introduction to many topics but also gives tax specialists the benefit of other experts' best thinking, in a manner that makes the complex understandable. Reference lists point the reader to additional sources of information for each topic. The first edition of The Encyclopedia of Taxation and Tax Policy was selected as an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year (1999) by Choice magazine."--Publisher's website.
Author: Charles L. Ballard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226036332
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book reports the authors' research on one of the most sophisticated general equilibrium models designed for tax policy analysis. Significantly disaggregated and incorporating the complete array of federal, state, and local taxes, the model represents the U.S. economy and tax system in a large computer package. The authors consider modifications of the tax system, including those being raised in current policy debates, such as consumption-based taxes and integration of the corporate and personal income tax systems. A counterfactual economy associated with each of these alternatives is generated, and the possible outcomes are compared.
Author: Peter B. Dixon
Publisher: Newnes
ISBN: 044462631X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1886
Get Book Here
Book Description
Top scholars synthesize and analyze scholarship on this widely used tool of policy analysis in 27 articles, setting forth its accomplishments, difficulties, and means of implementation. Though CGE modeling does not play a prominent role in top U.S. graduate schools, it is employed universally in the development of economic policy. This collection is particularly important because it presents a history of modeling applications and examines competing points of view. Presents coherent summaries of CGE theories that inform major model types Covers the construction of CGE databases, model solving, and computer-assisted interpretation of results Shows how CGE modeling has made a contribution to economic policy
Author: International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1498345204
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 78
Get Book Here
Book Description
Risks to macroeconomic stability posed by excessive private leverage are significantly amplified by tax distortions. ‘Debt bias’ (tax provisions favoring finance by debt rather than equity) has increased leverage in both the household and corporate sectors, and is now widely recognized as a significant macroeconomic concern. This paper presents new evidence of the extent of debt bias, including estimates for banks and non-bank financial institutions both before and after the global financial crisis. It presents policy options to alleviate debt bias, and assesses their effectiveness. The paper finds that thin capitalization rules restricting interest deductibility have only partially been able to address debt bias, but that an allowance for corporate equity has generally proved effective. The paper concludes that debt bias should feature prominently in countries’ tax reform plans in the coming years.
Author: Martin Feldstein
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080544193
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 744
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Field of Public Economics has been changing rapidly in recent years, and the sixteen chapters contained in this Handbook survey many of the new developments. As a field, Public Economics is defined by its objectives rather than its techniques and much of what is new is the application of modern methods of economic theory and econometrics to problems that have been addressed by economists for over two hundred years. More generally, the discussion of public finance issues also involves elements of political science, finance and philosophy. These connections are evidence in several of the chapters that follow. Public Economics is the positive and normative study of government's effect on the economy. We attempt to explain why government behaves as it does, how its behavior influences the behavior of private firms and households, and what the welfare effects of such changes in behavior are. Following Musgrave (1959) one may imagine three purposes for government intervention in the economy: allocation, when market failure causes the private outcome to be Pareto inefficient, distribution, when the private market outcome leaves some individuals with unacceptably low shares in the fruits of the economy, and stabilization, when the private market outcome leaves some of the economy's resources underutilized. The recent trend in economic research has tended to emphasize the character of stabilization problems as problems of allocation in the labor market. The effects that government intervention can have on the allocation and distribution of an economy's resources are described in terms of efficiency and incidence effects. These are the primary measures used to evaluate the welfare effects of government policy.
Author: Mary E. Burfisher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107132207
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 443
Get Book Here
Book Description
The book provides a hands-on introduction to computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, written at an accessible, undergraduate level.
Author: Arnold C. Harberger
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Taxation
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: H. Blomqvist
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403914346
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Get Book Here
Book Description
An economy does not always work according to idealized textbook models. Frequently, economic systems are subject to wide-ranging distortions and require remedy via subsidy and taxes to restore their social optimum. In The Distorted Economy, Hans C. Blomqvist and Mats Lundahl describe how to tackle the various distortions on goods and factor markets and apply their analytic framework to several case studies such as the trade policy of developing countries, apartheid in South Africa and socialist planned economies. The authors offer an important and timely analysis of the cause, effect and resolution of distortions in the economy.
Author: Finn R. Forsund
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349080942
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume brings together a number of new studies concerned with some of the topical problems of taxation. In Part I, limits of taxation are considered from the viewpoint of normative tax theory, its relation to the 'hidden' economy, and in terms of empirical estimates of the effects of taxes. Part II contains three theoretical studies which extend the theory of income taxation and redistribution. Part III deals with the corporate tax and contains both theoretical and empirical contributions. In conclusion, Part IV is devoted to two analyses of alternatives to income and corporate taxation. The authors represent a number of different countries and viewpoints.
