Rethinking Hecs: Its Definition and Fiscal Role in Compensating for Non-deductibility of Tuition Fees

This paper develops a two period model of the higher education decision to determine the required return from higher education. It uses the model to calculate the proportion of full tuition costs which should be charged 'up front' under the Australian Higher Education Scheme (HECS), in order to compensate for the fact that such fees are not deductible against income for tax purposes. Because full tuition costs represent less than 11 per cent of the total costs of higher education, the ideal HECS ratio is relatively high, in the region of 0.7. The low relative importance of tuition costs means that fee subsidy schemes cannot possibly compensate for other distortions such as income tax progression which persist over the working life of graduates.     

The Economic Effects (Neutrality) of Taxes on Land

A bstract A recent review of the economic effects of land taxation by Steven Bourassa created the misleading impression that a tax on land will have pro-development or non-neutral effects where there are non pecuniary returns from land or where there are capital market imperfections preventing developers from obtaining all the land that they want for development This note argues that a tax on land value is generally neutral, and that this will be the case whether or not there are non pecuniary returns and capital market imperfections, provided that the existence and extent of the imperfections are independent of the tax