Government Spending, Taxation, and Oil Revenues in Mexico

The paper analyzes the intertemporal relationship between oil duties, taxes, government spending, and GDP in Mexico during the 1981–98 period. The results from estimating a VAR model, impulse response functions, and variance decompositions on the quarterly series of taxes, government spending, oil duties, and GDP suggest that there seems to be a substitution effect between oil duties and tax revenues, and that tax revenues are not able to absorb temporary decreases in oil duties. Also, increases in tax revenue might lead to increasing government spending, but short–run increases in government spending are not likely to lead to political pressure to reduce the expected budget deficit via increased taxation and/or oil revenues. Lastly, GDP is not stimulated in the short–run by temporary increases in government spending and, thus, stabilization measures adopted in recent years to reduce the size of the government are not likely to significantly undermine GDP growth.     

Controling tax evasion under direct and indirect taxation: Some notes

The purpose of the paper is to use a simple model of the firm having monopoly power in the goods market as the framework to study the relative effectiveness of unit, ad valorem and profit taxes under two alternative criteria when the taxes are changeds so as to keep either the expected utility of the monopoly firm or the expected tax revenues for government constant. Under the former policy the profit tax turns out to be best and the unit tax worst in all respects; for instance, the profit tax will give rise to higher production, lower prices, lower tax evasion and higher tax revenues for government than other taxes. The dominance of the profit tax and the inferiority of the unit tax still holds under the policy of keeping the expected tax revenues constant in terms of production, prices and the expected utility of the monopoly firm. But strikingly, in terms of effectiveness of tax evasion control the ranking of taxes is now exactly the reverse from the one obtained under the expected utility criterium; now the unit tax is best and the profit tax worst.     

GROWTH AND VARIABILITY OF SCHOOL DISTRICT INCOME TAX REVENUES: IS TAX BASE DIVERSIFICATION A GOOD IDEA FOR SCHOOL FINANCING?

School districts in Ohio have the option of diversifying their revenue base by adopting income taxes. Using a panel of Ohio school districts that adopted a local income tax from 1990 to 2008, we find that revenues are procyclical and fluctuate only mildly. The estimated short‐ and long‐run income elasticity of school district income tax revenues is 1.05 and 1.04, respectively. We also find that the school district tax base fully adjusts to its long‐run equilibrium within 2 years. Finally, we show that school district income tax adoption does not provide more stability to total school district tax revenues in the short or the long run. (JEL H71, H75)     

A macrotheoretic analysis of inflation,taxes, and the price of equity

This paper examines the effects of higher inflation on asset prices via the impact on effective tax rates. The problem is addressed in a full macroeconomic context where explicit attention is paid to the government budget constraint. The analysis shows that the magnitude of the inflationary impact on asset prices varies significantly according to the nature of the government's fiscal response to changes in tax revenues generated by more inflation; in particular, by whether increased inflation revenues are met by an equal increase in public expenditures or by commensurate reductions in other tax parameters which keep total revenues constant.     

Index to Volume 52, 2000

In an efficiency wage economy with variable profits, a shift from payroll to employment taxes will reduce unemployment if the tax level is held constant at the initial wage. However, unemployment will rise if firms are constrained to zero profits in the long run and if tax revenues are constant. This reversal of employment effects occurs because the shift in taxes reduces wages. This implies a budget deficit. Hence, taxes will have to be raised if revenues are held constant. If the firm's profits cannot change, the tax increase will cause some firms to close down and unemployment will rise. Thus, the predicted employment consequences of changes in the tax structure depend on assumptions about the time horizon and budget constraint.     

税收增长对经济增长的负面冲击

1994年税制改革以来,我国各地区税收收入连年高速增长,导致全国税收收入占GDP的比重迅速上升。研究发现这种税收收入的快速增长给经济增长带来严重不利影响。它降低了经济增长率和税后单位资本的产出水平,并且中西部地区税收增长对经济增长的负面冲击高于东部地区。这种情况对于我国保持经济长期稳定增长,有效实施西部大开发战略可能不利,政府应适时调整税收政策。     

CIGARETTE TAXATION AND DEMAND: AN EMPIRICAL MODEL

This paper evaluates the impact of taxation on cigarette consumption, using a recursive model that includes a retail price equation and a dynamic demand equation. The analysis is based on panel data for 11 western states over the period 1967–1990. Results indicate that cigarette consumption is price-sensitive, with a demand elasticity of –0.40 in the short run and –0.48 in the long run. A tax increase, such as that imposed in California in January 1989, can have a strong effect of reducing cigarette consumption by between 11.2 percent in the short run and 13.4 percent in the long run. These results support the theory of rational addiction and the hypothesis that, as a part of their oligopoly behavior, the tobacco companies often do raise end-market prices by more than the amount of the increase in tax rates .     

The incidence of a tax on pure rent in a small open economy

This paper analyzes the effects of a land rent tax on capital formation and foreign investment in a life-cycle small open economy with endogenous labor-leisure choices. The consequences of land taxation critically depend on how the tax proceeds are used by the government. A land tax depresses capital formation, crowds out foreign investment and increases national wealth and consumption when the land tax revenues are distributed as lump-sum payments. If the proceeds from land taxation are used to finance unproductive government expenditure, the land tax will be neutral in its effects on the capital stock, nonhuman wealth and labor. When the tax revenues are used to reduce labor taxes, the land rent tax spurs nonhuman wealth accumulation and ambiguously affects the capital stock and labor.     

Bribes vs. taxes: Market structure and incentives

Firms in low-income countries often avoid paying taxes by making informal payments to tax officials. To decrease these payments, we design an incentive scheme for business tax inspectors that rewards them according to the anonymous evaluation submitted by inspected firms. We show theoretically that incentives decrease the bribe amount, but make firms facing a more inelastic demand more attractive for inspectors. Attaching higher weights to the evaluation of smaller firms limits the scope for targeting. We evaluate both schemes in a field experiment in the Kyrgyz Republic. Our intervention reduces average business costs and prices, and increases tax revenues.     

Demand and distance: Evidence on cross-border shopping

An important issue for commodity taxation is the extent to which changes in foreign taxes affect the extent of cross-border shopping and thereby, domestic tax revenue. We use data from Swedish municipalities to estimate how responsive alcohol sales are to foreign prices, and relate the sensitivity to the location’s distance to the border. Typical results suggest that the elasticity with respect to the foreign price is around 0.3 in the border region; moving 150 (400) km inland reduces the cross-price elasticity to 0.2 (0.1). Our estimates suggest that a recent Danish cut in the spirits tax reduced Swedish tax revenues from spirits sales by more than 2%, and that an attempt by Sweden to cut taxes in response would reduce tax revenues further.     

Formula apportionment vs. separate accounting: A private information perspective

In 2002, the European Commission recommended that member countries use formula apportionment procedures to tax multinational companies. This departure from the standard separate accounting (transfer pricing) approach is an attempt to reduce the costs and distortions associated with auditing transfer prices. Unfortunately, apportionment formulas create their own economic distortions and, contrary to popular belief, they do not eliminate distortions due to asymmetric information between the multinational and the national tax authorities. In this paper, I explicitly model the role of private information in two tax competition games: one in which tax liabilities are calculated under formula apportionment and one in which tax liabilities are calculated under separate accounting and transfer prices are audited. Switching to a formula apportionment system affects the after-tax profit of multinationals and the tax revenues paid by both domestic and foreign firms. The direction and magnitude of the changes depend on the accuracy of the auditing technology and non-monotonically on multinational costs. The switch will have different effects on the tax receipts from domestic and foreign firms.     

Unions, government's preference, and privatization

By introducing the government's preference for tax revenues into the theoretical framework of unionized mixed oligopolies, this study investigates the efficiency of privatization. The results are twofold. First, regardless of the government's preference for tax revenues and the number of private firms, the government and the public firm do not always have an incentive to privatize the public firm even if the government places lesser emphasis on the tax revenues than on social welfare. Second, social welfare increases with an increased number of private firms regardless of the government's preference for tax revenues and decreases with the government's preference for tax revenues regardless of the number of private firms. Hence, the government can use tax more efficiently as a commitment device to control the union's wage demand so as to maintain lower wage level under unionized mixed oligopoly.     

Growth,intergenerational welfare,and environmental policies in an overlapping generations economy

This paper examines the effects of the environmental tax on long‐run growth and intergenerational welfare in a discrete‐time overlapping generations (OLG ) model. We highlight that the role regarding how the environmental tax revenues are distributed between the young or old generations has important implications for the growth and welfare effects. Our results indicate that raising the environmental tax can exert different effects on the environmental utility of the existing young and old generations, implying an intergenerational welfare conflict of the environmental policy. However, if tax revenues are distributed appropriately, our numerical simulation shows that it is possible for a higher environmental tax to improve the welfare of all generations.     

The impact of electricity prices on foreign direct investment: evidence from the European Union

We examine the impact of electricity price variation on net FDI (%GDP) inflows in countries of the European Union. We use panel data of 27 EU countries for a period of 2003 – 2013. We show that electricity prices of south-western and north-eastern EU countries did not converge to one price until now. Dynamic panel data analysis using system GMM shows that besides unit labour costs, tax rates and competitive disadvantage in secondary education, also higher electricity prices reduce countries’ ability to attract FDI. The immediate effects are statistically significant across both sub-regions analysed: in the short run, a 10% increase in electricity prices leads to a decrease in net FDI inflows as a share of GDP by 0.4 percentage points for the south-western and 0.33 for the north-eastern region. In the long run, the response is 0.60 percentage points for south-western and 0.48 for north-eastern regions. Policies should aim at reducing electricity market price differences on the European level through investment in transborder transmission capacity; reductions in FDI, when environmental policy increases after-tax electricity prices, should be countered by other tax reductions as well as harmonization of property rights, absence of corruption and labour market regulations at best-practice level.     

Tax revenues, fiscal corruption and “shame” costs

In this paper we explore tax revenues in a regime of widespread fiscal corruption in a static framework. We prove that the relationship between the tax rate and tax revenues depends on the relevance of the “shame effect” of being detected in a corrupt transaction. In countries with a “low shame” effect, tax revenues grow as the tax rate increases. Moreover, there is a critical tax rate where the growth rate of tax revenues begins to reduce. In countries with a high “shame effect” tax revenues increase up to a threshold value and then decrease.     

Lotto nothing? The budgetary impact of state lotteries

Lottery revenues are often touted as an independent revenue source for states. Using 32 years of state financial data, the fallacy of such thinking is demonstrated. Being the first to control for the self-selection of being a lottery state, it is found that overall tax revenues decline with increased lottery sales. Moreover, it is discovered that this decline is driven by a decrease in revenues from general sales and excise taxes, which is only partially offset by increases in income tax receipts. Such findings are attributed to a combination of behavioural and political responses following the lottery's implementation.     

Demographic change and income tax revenues – results from a large microsimulation model for Germany

Similarly to many other European countries, Germany has experienced a considerable demographic shift since the 1970s: higher life expectancy and diminishing birth rates, only partly balanced by immigration, have led to an altered population structure with an increasing share of elderly people. In the next decades, population aging in Germany will accelerate and also induce a decline of the total population. These demographic changes can be expected to have a profound impact on the governmental budget. While shifts in public expenditures have been forecasted regularly since 2005, the revenue side has received less attention to date. We study the long-term (2015–2060) shifts in income tax revenues induced by demographic change. Our aim is to quantify possible fiscal effects of demographic change using microsimulation and to identify elements of the income tax code particularly affected. We find the expected demographic changes to have a clear negative impact on income tax revenues. Population aging increases the impact of various deductibility rules on total income tax revenues, in particular the impact of the deductibility of old-age and health insurance provisions. The impact of the deductibility of exceptional expenses such as expenses for caregiving also increases, but remains small overall. Due to expected increases in real incomes, however, demographic change does not imply an absolute drop in income tax revenues in the next decades.     

The Impact of the Shadow Economy on Indirect Tax Revenues

This paper examines empirically the impact of the shadow economy on indirect tax revenues in an unbalanced panel of 125 countries for the period 1990–2011. The same analysis is conducted excluding at first and then including international trade tax revenues in (total) indirect tax revenues, as a way to disentangle any impact of trade liberalization. In both cases, the results suggest that the size of the shadow economy increases the ratio of indirect tax revenues to GDP, as long as informality does not exceed a cutoff value. When the size of the shadow economy exceeds that level, any further increase affects indirect taxation negatively. The findings are robust to a number of sensitivity tests and when addressing the problem of potential endogeneity. The empirical evidence is in line with the predictions provided by the theoretical framework of the paper.     

A quantitative theory of tax evasion

I present a simple, unified approach to study the tax evasion practices often observed in developing countries. I develop a general equilibrium model where heterogeneous establishments optimally select themselves into informality, tax compliance, and formal tax evasion. Informal firms evade taxes by staying small, while larger, formal firms can engage in costly tax evasion. In equilibrium, tax revenues rely on medium-sized firms, which are scarce. In a calibration exercise using data from Mexico, I find that reducing the returns to tax evasion by formal firms increases tax revenues by up to 68%. However, economies where such returns are too high face a trade-off between tax collection and aggregate efficiency, as cracking down on formal tax-evading firms pushes some firms into informality. Last, as the economy develops, the informal sector shrinks, while the tax-evading sector expands, thus limiting potential collection. If lower informality is a byproduct of development, and not vice versa, a solid tax base can be achieved by fiscal authorities effectively by focusing on formal tax evasion.     

FUEL TAXES AND COINTEGRATION OF ENERGY PRICES

Creating a successful energy tax policy requires understanding the markets that the energy policy targets. This paper analyzes coal, natural gas, and oil markets to determine the extent to which these fuel prices move together. Results indicate that a stable long-run relationship between coal and oil prices existed until 1974 and that this relationship changed after 1974. The long-run relationship between coal, natural gas, and oil prices implies that a single fuel tax in these markets would not be effective as a single tax policy. Similarly, an equal percentage tax on these energy sources, which does not change relative prices initially, would not keep relative prices unchanged in the long run. Energy policy must take account of the long-run relationship between different energy prices. Otherwise, the long-run results of energy policy could be quite different than intended .