On the marginal excess burden of taxation in an overlapping generations model

We extend marginal excess burden (MEB) analysis in public finance literature to a dynamic general equilibrium model with incomplete markets and heterogeneous households. This extension allows us to quantitatively assess efficiency ranking and incidence of taxes. Our results indicate a disparity in welfare cost and distributional consequence of different forms of taxation on capital, labor and consumption. According to our MEB ranking, capital income taxation appears to be least efficient as it results in larger marginal excess burdens, compared to labor income tax and consumption tax. The tax incidence analysis shows variation of tax burdens across households, depending on their age, income type and generation. In particular, older households with higher income bear the highest burden of company income tax; meanwhile, future born households bear the highest burden of personal income tax. Hence, our MEB analysis demonstrates a fruitful approach to better understanding efficiency and incidence of tax reforms in one unified framework.     

The Household, Time Use and Tax Policy

This paper is concerned with modelling household decisions andthe welfare effects of tax policy. It seeks to emphasise theimportance of a model that incorporates household productionand can take account of the evident female labour supply heterogeneityacross two-parent families. If, after having children, someproportion of households substitute domestic for market laboursupply, the income and consumption variables used as the taxbase in most countries may be poorly correlated with livingstandards. Taxes and welfare programs based on these variablesmay increase inequality by shifting the overall tax burden tolow and middle wage families with both partners in work, awayfrom families with much higher wages and in which only one memberworks to earn the same joint market income. The paper combinesdata on time use, income, taxes and benefits to show how theytrack female labour supply over the life cycle, resulting inmuch higher tax burdens on two-earner households. (JEL D13,D91, H31, J22)     

A TALE OF TAX POLICIES IN OPEN ECONOMIES

To evaluate fiscal policy reforms for Euro‐area countries, this article develops and calibrates a small open economy model. Debt reduction reforms require higher tax rates in the short term in exchange for lower rates in the long term as the debt‐servicing burden falls. Using the capital income tax to implement such a policy leads to welfare gains; the consumption tax, a very small welfare gain; and the labor income tax, a welfare loss. Holding fixed the long‐run debt–output ratio, offsetting a lower capital income tax with either a higher labor income or consumption tax generally yields welfare gains.     

The Redistributive Effects of a Minimum Wage Increase in New Zealand: A Microsimulation Analysis

This paper examines the potential effects on inequality and poverty of a minimum wage increase, based on a microsimulation model that captures the details of household composition and the income tax and welfare benefit system and allows for labour supply responses. Results suggest that, largely due to the composition of household incomes, a policy of increasing the minimum wage has a relatively small effect on the inequality of income per adult equivalent person, and a money metric utility measure, using several inequality indices. Hence, the minimum wage policy does not appear to be particularly well targeted, largely due to many low wage earners being secondary earners in higher income households, while many low income households have no wage earners at all. These results are reinforced when allowing for wage spillovers further up the wage distribution. Nevertheless, a minimum wage increase can have a more substantial effect on some poverty measures for sole parents in employment.     

The Marginal Costs and Benefits of Redistributing Income and the Willingness to Pay for Status

The effect of status on aggregate welfare is ambiguous for marginal reforms that redistribute income. If average consumption falls, the change in relative consumption increases household utility but reinforces the decrease in household labor supply, raising welfare cost. For parameterizations of the model developed here, reforms which lower average consumption increase aggregate welfare. Numerical calculations show that status increases marginal welfare cost and marginal net benefit for a demogrant reform. Redistributing to high income households may increase aggregate welfare depending on the definition of average consumption and if the willingness to pay for status increases with income.     

The choice of excise taxes when savings and labour decisions are distorted

The framework is a simple two period life-cycle model with identical individuals who work in period 1 and are retired in period 2. Initially there are optimally chosen uniform income and commodity tax rates, which lead to distortions in both the labour/leisure choice and the consumption/savings choice. The purpose is to demonstrate in an intuitively comprehensible way how differentiating commodity taxation by slightly increasing the tax on one consumption good can mitigate existing distortions. The sufficient conditions for a welfare improvement are similar to that of Corlett and Hague plus some conditions on average and marginal consumption propensities.     

Union Wage Setting and Capital Income Taxation in Dynamic General Equilibrium

This paper concerns the effects of capital income taxation in a dynamic general equilibrium framework with union wage setting, when households face taxes related to both labor and capital. One purpose is to characterize the general equilibrium solution. Another is to study the effects of increased capital income taxation – in terms of the responses in real wages, employment, capital stock, output and consumption – and relate these behavioral responses to the overall tax structure. We also derive a cost–benefit rule for the purpose of analyzing the welfare effects of a small shift from labor income taxation to capital income taxation.     

Indirect Tax Reform in Australia: The Welfare Effects on Different Demographic Groups

The welfare effects of several indirect tax reforms in Australia are examined for a number of types of household in a range of income groups. The welfare changes, measured using equivalent variations, are based on the use of the linear expenditure system, where parameters are different in each of the income groups. The effects of the current system and of several reforms are found to differ significantly among the household types. However, the results suggest that the extent of vertical redistribution involved in the current indirect tax structure, and possible reforms to it, are small. The role of exemptions are examined in the case of food, for which the budget shares are systematically higher in lower income households, and health services. In view of the strong assumptions used at each stage, the results must be regarded as tentative.     

Conflicting Interests in Environmental Policy-making?

This paper focuses on possible conflicts of interests between the political aims of reduced emissions from energy consumption, redistribution of welfare and efficient policy-making. We use the results from a LES estimation to calculate the consumption reductions, compensating variations and excess tax burdens of three different tax schemes: one linear and two non-linear. Unless the tax scheme is optimally designed to correct for externalities, there is a conflict of interests between the aims of reduced consumption and efficient policy-making. When ranking different tax schemes, there is a conflict between the aims of redistributing welfare and reduced consumption if we are concerned with the well-being of individual households, but not if we are concerned only with the mean household in different parts of the income distribution.     

收入结构对家庭消费倾向和消费结构的影响*——基于心理账户视角的研究

本文关注不同收入结构对家庭消费的影响，从行为经济学视角解释了近年来中国居民消费率和非工资性收入占比同时提高的现象。本文使用中国家庭跟踪调查（CFPS）数据，采用面板数据双向固定效应模型进行分析。结果显示，转移性收入和财产性收入的边际消费倾向显著高于工资性收入和经营性收入，财产性收入的边际消费倾向最高，而工资性收入和经营性收入间的边际消费倾向无统计差异。工资性收入和经营性收入更多用于居住等生活必需支出，财产性收入和转移性收入则用于提高众多子类消费。此外，以上结果在城乡间和地区间具有异质性。     

The impact of the 2008 German corporate tax reform: A dynamic CGE analysis

In this paper we develop the dynamic CGE model, ifoMod, which is designed to analyse the impact of fundamental tax reforms and in particular capital income tax reforms for Germany. The model is in line with neoclassical growth theory and features all important behavioural interactions between the four major building blocks of an economy including the firm and household sector, the government and the rest of the world. We consider firms of different legal forms which all face an intertemporal investment problem, a financing problem w.r.t. the optimal choice of debt and equity financing as well as a factor input problem when deciding on the optimal amount of different skill types of labour employed. We show the impact of different types of taxes on the behavioural margins of firms and households. The conducted simulation shows the impact of the latest German corporate tax reform of 2008 on the German macroeconomic variables such as investments, GDP, consumption and household's welfare.     

Progressive Taxation and the Life-Cycle Model: An Application of the Theory of Firm*

In the presence of a progressive consumption (wage income) lax the marginal cost of consumption (leisure) is rising and* the life-cycle allocation problem of an individual is presentable in the framework of a monopsony. Although the progressive taxes do not in general alter the qualitative nature of standard results on life-cycle theory, their quantitative implications are serious. In contrast to the equivalence between proportional consumption and wage income taxes, the effects of the two progressive taxes on the life-cycle consumption and labour supply allocation decision are not only different but in most cases also in opposite directions.     

The public and private provision of pure public goods and the distortionary effects of income taxation: a political economy approach

Abstract .  A pure public good is provided by the government and the voluntary contributions of two types of households. The government finances its contribution by means of income taxation. The latter has distortionary effects. A third type of household never makes contributions. We analyse the effects of changes in the income tax rate on (a) the provision of the public good, (b) the private contributions of the households, and (c) changes in the distribution of income and welfare between contributing and non-contributing households. We derive a simple and testable condition under which the lowering of the income tax entails a Pareto improvement.     

MACROECONOMIC AND REDISTRIBUTIONAL EFFECTS OF CONSUMPTION TAXES IN THE USA*

This paper studies the effect of an increase in consumption taxes using a dynamic general equilibrium model of overlapping generations calibrated to the US economy. When the proceeds are used to reduce income taxes, the reform raises the aggregate capital and labour supply in the long run. Workers increase labour supply immediately in response to the reform, while consumption rises only gradually. The tax reform also transfers wealth from old consumers to young consumers. As a result, while future generations experience significant welfare gains, current generations, particularly old consumers, tend to experience sizable welfare losses. When the proceeds are used for a lump‐sum transfer, the aggregate capital and labour both decrease in the long run. This reform is welfare‐improving for the current low‐income households.     

Tax‐deferred savings plans and interest deductibility

Abstract.  Programs that defer taxes on savings (e.g., RRSPs or 401(k)s) are supposed to move income tax systems closer to the more efficient consumption tax. Whether or not RRSPs move income tax systems away from or closer to a consumption tax depends on whether or not interest on debts incurred to make RRSP contributions is deductible for income tax purposes. If people optimize as assumed in simple life‐cycle models, then it may be that governments can convert a non‐linear income tax system to a proportional consumption tax system. I argue this is plausible for some Canadian households. JEL classification: H21, H24     

AN APPROXIMATION FOR THE OPTIMAL LINEAR INCOME TAX RATE

This paper derives a convenient method of calculating an approximation to the optimal tax rate in a linear income tax structure. Individuals are assumed to have Cobb-Douglas preferences and the wage rate distribution is lognormal. First, the optimal tax rate is shown, for a general form of social welfare function, to be the smallest root of a quadratic equation involving a welfare-weighted average wage rate. Second, an approximation to this average is derived for an isoelastic social welfare function. This average depends on the degree of inequality aversion of the welfare function and the coefficient on consumption in individuals' utility functions. Calculations show that the method performs well in comparison with standard simulation methods of computing the optimal tax rate.     

How fragile are male labor supply function estimates?

We estimate male wage and nonwage income effects using linear specifications spanning three techniques (ordinary least squares, fixed effects, and random effects), two wage measures (reported hourly wages and average hourly earnings), and sample stratification by pay scheme (salaried versus hourly paid). Our regressions encompass the one-period static and perfect-foresight life-cycle models. The static model implies exogenous random person-specific effects, a negative nonwage income coefficient, and a positive labor supply substitution effect. The life-cycle model implies endogenous individual-specific effects, a positive wage coefficient, and a zero nonwage income coefficient. Neither the one-period static nor the perfect-foresight life-cycle models are implied by the data for salaried workers while the static model is consistent with the data for hourly paid workers if income taxes are ignored.     

Is the household demand for in-home services sensitive to tax reductions? The French case

Our paper examines the impact of tax reductions on the demand for services in the home. For that purpose, we estimate a structural model of demand for such services by using household individual data collected by INSEE (Paris) in 1996. In this model, the net hourly wage paid to the domestic employee, the household preferences for consumption of in-home services and the decision to take advantage of the tax reduction are considered as endogenous variables. Estimation of the econometric model uses the fact that some households are observed to consume domestic services and to take advantage of the tax reduction, while others either consume such services but do not take advantage of the tax reduction, or do not consume these services at all. Its identification relies on an exclusion restriction resulting from the tax credit schedule. Results show that the probability of consuming in-home services increases with age and income. A 10% increase in the tax reduction would increase from 45.9 to 50.8% the proportion of households benefiting from the tax reduction among those who consume paid in-home services. Moreover, 13.5% of households who do not actually consume such services would do so after the 10% increase in the tax reduction. These simulated variations would mainly concern high-income households.     

The end of the flat tax experiment in Slovakia: An evaluation using behavioural microsimulation in a dynamic macroeconomic framework

The paper introduces a new way of linking microsimulation models with dynamic general equilibrium frameworks to obtain an evaluation of the impact of detailed tax and benefit measures on the aggregate economy. In the approach presented in this paper, income heterogeneity interacts with the macro-economy via aggregated individual labour supply decisions which influence, and are influenced by, the dynamic evolution of the real wage rate. The method involves a reduced-form representation of the information flow between the macroeconomic and microeconomic blocks. The practical usefulness of the approach is demonstrated by evaluating actual and hypothetical tax reforms that involve abandoning the flat tax system in Slovakia. A hypothetical move to a highly progressive tax structure is shown to generate some employment gains but is associated with a drop in aggregate income and tax revenue.     

Lower Tax Progression, Longer Hours and Higher Wages

The impact of tax reforms that decrease income tax progression is analysed in an equilibrium search model with wage bargaining and endogenous individual working hours. Working hours are either bargained together with the hourly wage (case 1) or determined solely by workers after bargaining over the wage (case 2). In both cases reducing tax progression increases working hours of employed and, more interestingly, unambiguously increases wages and unemployment. Wages and unemployment rise more and working hours and production less in case 1 compared to case 2, probably making case 2 countries best suited for such tax reforms.
JEL Classification : H 24; J 22; J 41