Political competition,tax salience and accountability. Theory and evidence from Italy

This paper argues that electoral competition may hinder rather than foster political accountability, especially when elected officers can choose among a number of tax instruments. We develop a political agency model showing that politicians in more competitive jurisdictions use less salient tax instruments more intensely. Defining salience as visibility or, analogously, as voters' awareness of the costs associated with specific government revenue sources, we argue that voters are less likely to hold politicians to account for the associated tax burden of a less salient instrument. This in turn implies that strategic politicians will more heavily rely on less salient revenue sources when electoral competition is stronger. Using data on Italian municipal elections and taxes over a 10-year period, we determine the degree of salience of various tax instruments, including property taxes (high salience) and government fees for official documents (low salience). We then show that mayors facing stronger competition for re-election use less salient tax instruments more intensely.     

Ad‐valorem tax incidence and after‐tax price adjustments: evidence from Brazilian basic basket food

Abstract Recent empirical work on tax incidence suggests that after‐tax price responses are independent of the tax change direction. This paper investigates asymmetric price responses to ad‐valorem tax changes in the Brazilian food market for 10 goods in 16 states during the period 1994–2008. Our results suggest that when tax rates increase, tax full shifting occurs for 2 of the 10 goods and tax overshifting occurs for one of the 10 goods; the price response to tax cuts is an undershifting for all goods. Moreover, this last result is similar to our estimation of (average) tax incidence (undershifting). We also investigate the short‐term and long‐term relationships between prices and VAT rate parameters and find that prices seem to respond to tax shocks within four months.     

Equalizing tax bases or tax revenues under tax competition? The role of formula apportionment

This paper contributes to the literature on fiscal equalization and corporate tax competition. The innovation is that we explicitly model multinational enterprises and a corporate tax system that is designed according to formula apportionment. Two main results are obtained. First, in contrast to previous studies we identify cases where tax revenue equalization is better in mitigating detrimental tax competition than tax base equalization. Second, tax base equalization nevertheless has the advantage that it may render tax rates efficient, depending on the shape of the apportionment formula. A pure payroll formula does not ensure efficiency, but a back‐of‐the‐envelope calibration of our model to Canadian provinces suggests that a pure sales formula may be optimal.     

Green tax reforms and habits

Using a dynamic general equilibrium model, we explore the role of habit formation when analyzing green tax reforms under the double dividend hypothesis. We assume increases in energy taxes and adjust capital taxation in a revenue-neutral framework to evaluate the effects on welfare. Since the existence of an environmental dividend is uncontroversial, we mainly focus on the efficiency dividend. Our findings show that, when taxes on household energy consumption increase, habits and transitional dynamics alter household decisions, and change the efficiency dividend. However, when the tax increase is on energy used as an input, reform always induces a welfare cost in terms of efficiency. In this case, habits play a less important role.     

Federal tax policies,congressional voting and natural resources

Can abundance of natural resources affect legislators' voting behaviour over federal tax policies? We construct a political economy model of a federalized economy with district heterogeneity in natural resource abundance. The model shows that representatives of natural resource‐rich districts are more (less) willing to vote in favour of federal tax increases (decreases). This occurs because resource‐rich districts are less responsive to federal tax changes due to the immobile nature of their natural resources. We test the model's predictions using data on roll‐call votes in the US House of Representatives over the major federal tax bills initiated during the period of 1945–2003, in conjunction with the presence of active giant oil fields in US congressional districts. Our identification strategy rests on plausibly exogenous giant oil field discoveries and exploitation and narrative‐based aggregate federal tax shocks that are exogenous to individual congressional districts and legislators. We find that: (i) resource‐rich congressional districts are less responsive to changes in federal taxes and (ii) representatives of resource‐rich congressional districts are more (less) supportive of federal tax increases (decreases), controlling for legislator, congressional district and state indicators. Our results indicate that resource richness is approximately half as dominant as the main determinant, namely party affiliation, in driving legislators' voting behaviour over federal tax policies.     

Implementing partial tax harmonization in an asymmetric tax competition game with repeated interaction

This paper investigates the conditions under which partial harmonization for capital taxation is sustained in a repeated interactions model of tax competition when there are three countries with heterogenous capital endowments. We show that regardless of the structure of the coalition (i.e., full or partial tax coordination), whether partial tax harmonization is sustainable or not crucially depends on the extent to which the capital endowment of the medium‐sized country is similar to that of the large or small country. The most noteworthy finding is that the closer the capital endowment of the median country is to the average one, the less likely the tax harmonization including the median country is to prevail and the more likely the partial tax harmonization excluding the median country is to prevail. We also show that partial tax harmonization makes the member countries of the tax union better off and non‐member countries worse off, which stands in sharpe contrast with previous studies, such as Konrad and Schjelderup (1999) and Bucovetsky (2009).     

Lobbying and the international fight against tax havens

Despite a variety of measures taken by high‐tax countries, the international fight against tax havens so far remains rather ineffective. This paper introduces offshore lobbying as a possible explanation for this observation. The author analyzes the international fight against tax havens in a two‐country model, in which the onshore country exerts pressure on domestic profit‐shifting firms and the tax haven's government lobbies against this measure. In this framework, he finds that pressure and lobbying are strategic substitutes and that there is an extensive margin incentive for offshore lobbying. Furthermore, when starting at initially high costs for profit shifting, a reduction in these costs leads to fewer profit‐shifting firms. Finally, when allowing for a second low‐tax jurisdiction, the overall level of lobbying increases, but less than proportionally.     

The effect of tax enforcement on tax morale

In this paper we argue that tax enforcement is an additional contextual factor affecting tax morale, one of the most important determinants of tax compliance. By using a unique dataset that merges a representative sample of Italian households with administrative data on tax enforcement, we first find that tax morale is positively correlated with tax enforcement. Second, to deal with possible endogeneity of tax enforcement, we show that results are confirmed in an IV specification using the change in the tax gap at the provincial level as an instrument for tax enforcement. Finally, we provide evidence that the impact of tax enforcement and social environment is stronger at low quantiles of tax morale. Our results show that besides that of lowering the expected value of tax evasion, tax enforcement has an additional and indirect effect on tax compliance through its effect on tax morale.     

Does labour supply respond to a flat tax?

We exploit the exogenous change in marginal tax rates created by the Russian flat tax reform of 2001 to identify the effect of taxes on the labour supply of men and women. We apply a weighted difference‐in‐difference regression approach and instrumental variables to estimate labour supply functions using a panel dataset. The mean regression results indicate that the tax reform led to a statistically significant increase in hours of work for men but had no effect on work hours for women. However, we find a positive response to tax changes in both tails of the female work hour distribution. We also find that the reform increased the probability of finding a job among both men and women. Despite significant variation in individual responses, the aggregate labour supply elasticities are trivial. This suggests that reform‐induced changes in labour supply are an unlikely explanation for the amplified personal income tax revenues that followed the reform.     

Vertical externalities in tax setting: evidence from gasoline and cigarettes

A common feature of federal systems is that tax bases are joint property. Consequently, state and federal tax setting decisions are interdependent. Our aim here is to put forward a rudimentary theoretical analysis of this phenomenon, and to use the theory as a framework for econometrically estimating the magnitude of the responses. We find that when the federal government increases taxes, there is a significant positive response of state taxes. For example, a 10-cent per gallon increase in the federal tax rate on gasoline leads to a 3.2-cent increase in the state tax rate.     

Restricted origin principle under triangular trade flows: Implications for trade and tax revenues

In this paper we try to show that, even when we allow for the assumptions embodied in the standard literature of border tax adjustments, and furthermore restrict ourselves to the case of uniform as well as general taxes, across products and countries, the choice between origin and destination principles need not be irrelevant. In particular, when a triangular trade flow of products takes place between two states of a federation and foreign countries, unless the same principle of border tax adjustments is adopted on both domestic and foreign trade, part of the state tax base is transferred from one state to the other, leading to an undesirable reallocation of local tax revenues. We found that adoption by the Brazilian states of the restricted origin principle (origin principle applied to interstate trade and destination principle applied to foreign trade) led to a reallocation of local tax revenues from the Northeastern states to the residents of the rest of country. An obvious implication of this analysis is that reallocation of tax revenues due to bilaterally unbalanced trade could be easily adjusted by adoption of the same principle, origin or destination, for both domestic and foreign trade.     

The evasion of fiscal and labor regulations: Firm behavior and optimal tax policy

Firms face many fiscal and labor regulations, but they may evade these legal requirements in several different ways. We develop a model that captures these two types of evasion decisions and unlike existing literature assume firms can evade labor regulations independently from income tax responsibilities. We characterize firms’ entry and evasion behavior and find that the design of the tax system can generate both positive and negative correlations between evasion decisions consistent with what is observed empirically. We then characterize optimal government policies given the firms’ decisions. We obtain intuitive optimal tax rules that highlight the trade‐offs the government faces when firms have multiple margins on which to evade.     

Did tax flattening affect RRSP contributions?

In 1988 marginal personal income tax rates changed in Canada, for some individuals by reasonably substantial amounts. In this note a large sample of tax‐filer data is examined and the conclusion is drawn that, when attention is paid to the possible confounding of marginal tax rate and non‐linear income effects, there is no convincing evidence that the tax rate changes affected contributions to Registered Retirement Saving Plans (RRSPs). Est‐ce que l'aplatissement des taux d'imposition influence les contributions au REER? En 1988, les taux marginaux d'imposition du revenu personnel ont changé au Canada, et, pour certaines personnes, ces changements ont été substantiels. Cette note examine un grand échantillon de rapports d'impôts et en arrive à la conclusion que, quand on prend en compte le mélange possible des effets du taux marginal d'imposition et des effets de revenu non‐linéaires, il n'y a pas de résultats qui montrent de façon probante que les changements dans les taux d'imposition ont influencé les contributions au REER.     

Fairness in tax compliance: A political competition model

This paper analyzes the political economy of income redistribution when voters are concerned about fairness in tax compliance. We consider a two‐stage model where there is a two‐party competition over the tax rate and over the intensity of the tax enforcement policy in the first stage, and voters decide about their level of tax compliance in the second stage. We find that if the concern about fairness in tax compliance is high enough, a liberal middle‐income majority of voters may block any income redistribution policy. Alternatively, we find an equilibrium in which the preferences of the median voter are ignored in favor of a coalition formed by a group of relatively poor voters and the richest voters. In this equilibrium income redistribution prevails with no tax enforcement.     

Border tax adjustments and tariff‐tax reforms with consumption pollution

We develop a model of a small open economy, where pollution per unit of consumption between domestically produced and imported quantities of the same good differs. We show that the first‐best policy combination calls for consumption taxes on all polluting goods, and border tax adjustment (BTA) measures, that is, tariffs or import subsidies. We identify conditions under which well‐known tariff‐tax reform policies for developing economies, such as a consumer‐price‐neutral piecemeal reform of trade and a consumption tax, and a consumer‐price‐neutral reform of all trade and consumption taxes improve welfare. We also evaluate whether reforms of trade taxes alone are superior to consumer‐price‐neutral reforms of trade and consumption taxes.     

Optimal tax theory: A synthesis

Necessary conditions for optimal taxation are derived (i) when taxes are constrained to be linear, (ii) when the form of taxation is unconstrained, (iii) when some commodities are subject to nonlinear taxation, the remainder to proportional taxation. Among the results obtained are several that help to determine upon which commodities the tax system ought to bear most heavily. In particular, a criterion for the effect of commodity taxes in the presence of an optimal income tax is found. The paper concludes with a general principle of simple form for optimal economic policies of all kinds.     

The political economy of capital market integration and tax competition

This paper investigates the effect of capital market integration (CMI) on capital taxes in a political economy framework in which policy is influenced by lobbying of interest groups. CMI increases the efficiency cost of the capital tax, which introduces incentives to reduce the tax rate, but also reduces lobbying by owners of capitalists, which introduces countering incentives to increase the tax rate. CMI can therefore result in a higher capital tax rate. When the market share of each country is small, CMI may increase government supply of public goods and enhance efficiency, which implies that, in the presence of policy endogeneity through lobbying, decentralized policymaking can be more efficient than centralized policymaking.     

A note on income tax evasion,labor supply,and nonlinear tax schedules

The existing literature on income tax evasion lays claim to two important implications: one is that higher tax rates induce greater income declarations and the other is that increases in gross income induce a fall in the fraction of income declared. The purpose of this paper is to examine the robustness of these results with respect to three modifications of the standard model. The first involves relaxing the assumption of linear income tax schedules. The second modification is to consider an alternative form for the penalty function. Thirdly, we consider the consequences of the tax payer making a joint hours of work-income declaration decision.     

个税免征额、税率与拉弗曲线

本文基于个人所得税改革对经济主体行为产生激励的理论,尝试将个税免征额引入拉弗曲线(Laffer curve),分析了收入变化时收入税率曲线位置的移动与拉弗曲线的形态变化,以及个税免征额与最优税率之间的运动规律,发现随着个税免征额的提高,最优税率有下降的趋势,对我国当前个税免征额的提高与税率级次级距调整现象做出了较严密的数理分析。而在分析个税免征额的选择及其与税率之间的关系时,为我们找到在当前地区收入水平不均与居民收入分布多样的状况下的最优个税免征额以及实践差别化税制的理论依据,回答了原来仅考虑税率变化的拉弗曲线所不能回答的问题。     

Evaluating the effectiveness of in-work tax credits

One of the principle aims of the Working Families’ Tax Credit in the UK was to increase the participation of single mothers in work. The difference-in-differences methodology that is typically used to evaluate tax credit policies compares single mothers with single women without children. However, the characteristics of these groups are very different, and changes over time in relative covariates are likely to violate key identifying assumptions. We find that when we control for differential trends between women with and without children, the employment effect of the policy falls significantly. Moreover, closer inspection shows that while there was an effect on increasing the likelihood to work full-time (30 h or more), there was no effect on reducing the likelihood to be inactive. Looking closely at important covariates before and after the policy introduction, we can see sizeable changes in the relative returns to employment between the treatment and control groups, making it difficult to assess the policy effectiveness.