Do Taxes Matter?


Book Description

Taxes that are moderately distorting are potentially the most damaging because their effects may be substantial yet go unnoticed.




Do Taxes Matter?


Book Description




Do Taxes Matter for Long-Run Growth? Harberger's Superneutrality Conjecture


Book Description

Harberger’s superneutrality conjecture contends that, although in theory the mix of direct and indirect taxes affects investment and growth, in practice growth effects of taxation are negligible. This paper provides evidence in support of this view by testing the predictions of endogenous growth models driven by human capital accumulation. The theoretical analysis highlights implications of different taxes for growth and investment in these models. The empirical work is based on cross-country regressions and numerical simulations, using a new methodology for estimating aggregate effective tax rates. Results show significant investment effects from income and consumption taxes that are consistent with small growth effects. The results are robust to the introduction of other growth determinants.




Do Taxes Matter?


Book Description

Do Taxes Matter? is the first systematic examination of the actual effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the most important U.S. income tax reform of the last four decades. It presents basic information on and an analysis of a variety of different aspects of economic behavior in order to discover whether the observed changes coincide with the predictions of standard public finance models. Prior to implementation of the new law, supporters and opponents made numerous forecasts about its effect on savings, corporate investment, and other major determinants of the country's economic health. The general finding of these original contributions is that the effects of tax reform turned out to be smaller than had been anticipated. Commissioned by the Office of Tax Policy Research of the University of Michigan, eight of the studies focus on different sectors of the economy, reviewing the predictions and carefully analyzing the evidence to determine actual effects. The ninth study draws together the results to find lessons for future changes in tax policy. Joel Slemrod is Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy and Director of the Office of Tax Policy Research at the University of Michigan. Contents: The Economic Impact of Tax Reform Act of 1986, Joel Slemrod. Investment, Tax Policy, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986, Alan J. Auerbach, Kevin Hassett. The Impact of the 1986 Tax Reform on Personal Saving, Jonathan Skinner, Daniel Feenberg. Effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 on Corporate Financial Policy and Organizational Form, Roger H. Gordon, Jeffrey K. MacKie­Mason. Taxation and Housing Markets: Preliminary Evidence on the Effects of Recent Tax Reforms, James M. Poterba. The Impact of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 on Foreign Direct Investment to and from the United States, Joel Slemrod. The Impact of Tax Reform on Charitable Giving: A 1989 Perspective, Charles T. Clotfelter. The Impact of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 on State and Local Fiscal Behavior, Paul N. Courant, Edward M. Gramlich. Foreign Responses to U.S. Tax Reform, John Whalley. Lessons for Tax Reform, Henry J. Aaron.




Do Taxes Matter? Yes, No, Maybe So


Book Description

The author considers whether taxes have an effect on economic development. She finds it unlikely that taxes are an important factor in explaining differences in business location decisions between states or regions. However, she thinks that on the intraregional level, high local property taxes deter economic growth.




Do taxes matter ?


Book Description




Taxing Ourselves, fourth edition


Book Description

The fourth edition of a popular guide to the key issues in tax reform, discussing the current system and alternative proposals clearly and without a political agenda. As Albert Einstein may or may not have said, "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax." Indeed, to follow the debate over tax reform, the interested citizen is forced to choose between misleading sound bites and academic treatises. Taxing Ourselves bridges the gap between the two by discussing the key issues clearly and without a political agenda: Should the federal income tax be replaced with a flat tax or sales tax? Should it be left in place and reformed? Can tax cuts stimulate the economy, or will higher deficits undermine any economic benefit? Authors and tax policy experts Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija lay out in accessible language what is known and not known about how taxes affect the economy, offer guidelines for evaluating tax systems, and provide enough information to assess both the current income tax system and the leading proposals to reform or replace it (including the flat tax and the consumption tax). The fourth edition of this popular guide has been extensively revised to incorporate the latest information, covering such recent developments as the Bush administration's tax cuts (which expire in 2011) and the alternatives proposed by the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform. Slemrod and Bakija provide us with the knowledge and the tools—including an invaluable voter's guide to the tax policy debate—to make our own informed choices about how we should tax ourselves.




Making Money Matter


Book Description

The United States annually spends over $300 billion on public elementary and secondary education. As the nation enters the 21st century, it faces a major challenge: how best to tie this financial investment to the goal of high levels of achievement for all students. In addition, policymakers want assurance that education dollars are being raised and used in the most efficient and effective possible ways. The book covers such topics as: Legal and legislative efforts to reduce spending and achievement gaps. The shift from "equity" to "adequacy" as a new standard for determining fairness in education spending. The debate and the evidence over the productivity of American schools. Strategies for using school finance in support of broader reforms aimed at raising student achievement. This book contains a comprehensive review of the theory and practice of financing public schools by federal, state, and local governments in the United States. It distills the best available knowledge about the fairness and productivity of expenditures on education and assesses options for changing the finance system.




Tax Systems


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.




Taxation


Book Description

This is the first book to give a collective treatment of philosophical issues relating to tax. The tax system is central to the operation of states and to the ways in which states interact with individual citizens. Taxes are used by states to fund the provision of public goods and public services, to engage in direct or indirect forms of redistribution, and to mould the behaviour of individual citizens. As the contributors to this volume show, there are a number of pressing and thorny philosophical issues relating to the tax system, and these issues often connect in fascinating ways with foundational questions regarding property rights, public justification, democracy, state neutrality, stability, political psychology, and other moral and political issues. Many of these deep and fascinating philosophical questions about tax have not received as much sustained attention as they clearly merit. The aim of advancing the debate about tax in political philosophy has both general and more specific aspects, ranging across both over-arching issues regarding the tax system as a whole and more specific issues relating to particular forms of tax policy. Thinking clearly about tax is not an easy task, as much that is of central importance is missed if one proceeds at too great a level of abstraction, and issues of conceptual and normative importance often only come sharply into focus when viewed against real-world questions of implementation and feasibility. Serious philosophical work on the tax system will often therefore need to be interdisciplinary, and so the discussion in this book includes a number of scholars whose expertise spans across neighbouring disciplines to philosophy, including political science, economics, public policy, and law.