How does a Change in the Excise Tax on Beer Impact Beer Retail Prices in South Africa?

This article uses price data, collected by Statistics South Africa, to estimate the effect of a change in the excise tax on the retail price of beer. We find strong evidence that the excise tax on beer is overshifted to consumers. The pass‐through coefficient is estimated at 4.83 (95% CI: 4.02; 5.64) for lager, and at 4.77 (95% CI: 4.04; 5.50) for all beer (which includes dark beer). This implies that for every R1/unit increase in the excise tax, the retail price increases by about R4.80/unit. Of the 23 brand‐packaging combinations considered, the pass‐through coefficients vary between 2.39 and 10.05 (median = 5.30). The majority of the price change in response to a tax change occurs immediately, and prices have fully adjusted two months after the excise tax increase becomes effective. Pass‐through differs substantially across packaging types. The pass‐through coefficient on 750 ml bottles is substantially lower than that of 330 ml (or 340 ml) cans and 6 × 330 ml (or 6 × 340 ml) “six‐packs.” The overshifting of the excise tax has positive implications for public health policy, since they increase the effectiveness of alcohol taxes as a tool to reduce the (excessive) consumption of beer.     

Comparing the welfare effects of income and excise taxes in the presence of the other taxation paradox

This paper implements numerically a general equilibrium model in which all private producers are price makers and the government utilizes tax revenues to provide a public good. After deriving the partial equilibrium condition for an excise tax to increase price by more than the tax (for a monopoly firm), numerical examples are given, demonstrating this phenomenon for both partial and general equilibrium. In the general equilibrium context, optimal excise taxation and optimal flat-rate income taxation are compared. In the excise tax regime, prices increase by more than the taxes. In the income tax regime, prices actually decline relative to the no-tax regime. In all of the examples given, flat-rate income taxation is superior to excise taxation in terms of welfare. The author has benefitted from exceptionally helpful comments received from J. Ronnie Davis, John D. Wilson, Ralph W. Pfouts, and Amy Crews. He has also benefitted from conversations with Franz Gehrels, David E. Wildasin, Herbert J. Kiesling, and Harold York. The usual disclaimer applies.     

CIGARETTE DEMAND IN SOUTH AFRICA OVER 1996-2006: THE ROLE OF PRICE, INCOME AND HEALTH AWARENESS

The study seeks to re‐investigate the role of price, income and health awareness in the evolution of South African cigarette demand over the period 1996 to 2006. At first glance, rising cigarette prices appear to have played an important role in reducing cigarette consumption over the sample period, especially during the late 90s. But how dependent is the impact of price increases on general economic conditions and overall health awareness among smokers? Health awareness, in particular, has not received sufficient attention in the South African context, due to a lack of data. Previous estimates of price and income elasticities of cigarette demand are based on long annual time series data, which do not allow for changes in underlying tastes and preferences. The paper attempts to disentangle the forces of price, income, health awareness and policy intervention using a quarterly data set. In addition, the study also cautions against the upward bias in estimates derived from formal cigarette sales data – in the light of increasing illicit cigarette volumes in South Africa.     

INDUSTRY RESPONSES TO THE TOBACCO EXCISE TAX INCREASES IN SOUTH AFRICA

The cigarette manufacturing market in South Africa is highly concentrated, with one company controlling more than 90 per cent of the market. In this paper the retail price of cigarettes is divided into three components: excise tax, sales tax and industry price. After decreasing during the 1970s and 1980s, the real industry price increased substantially during the 1990s. This coincided with sharp increases in the excise tax. The amplified increase in the real retail price of cigarettes decreased aggregate cigarette consumption by about a third. Despite this sharp decline, the cigarette industry substantially enhanced its revenues during the 1990s. However, since 2000 real industry price increases have been comparatively modest.     

Putting Out Fires: An Examination of the Determinants of State Clean Indoor-Air Laws

Although numerous studies have examined the effect of clean indoor-air laws on tobacco consumption, a handful of other studies have sought to address the demand for smoking restrictions. This paper adds to this body of research by using a random effects Probit procedure that controls for the endogeneity of cigarette consumption and cigarette taxes to estimate the determinants of clean indoor-air laws. By treating cigarette consumption and cigarette taxes as exogenous, we found that taxes complement smoking restrictions. However, when we accounted for endogeneity, the role of cigarette taxes shifted toward being a policy substitute. Results further revealed that the probability of a state adopting a smoking restriction is particularly sensitive to per capita cigarette consumption, political affiliation, metropolitan population, per capita income, and tobacco production.     

Public Goods,Tax Policies,and Unemployment in LDCs

We build a general equilibrium model of a small open economy characterized by unemployment and producing two privately traded goods and one nontraded public consumption good. The provision of public good is financed with an income tax or an excise tax on the manufactured good or an import tariff. Within this framework, the paper examines the effects of such policies on the country's unemployment ratio and welfare, and it derives the efficiency rules for public good provision for each policy instrument. It shows, among other things, that the private marginal cost of the public good always overstates its social marginal cost in the case of income taxes and may overstate it in the case of an excise tax on the manufactured good or a tariff even if the taxed good and the public good are substitutes in consumption.     

Do Adolescents with Emotional or Behavioral Problems Respond to Cigarette Prices?

Adolescents with mental health problems have much higher rates of smoking than those without such problems. Although a large body of evidence suggests that higher cigarette prices reduce smoking prevalence and the quantity smoked, little is known about the interaction between mental health or behavioral problems and tobacco consumption in the general population or among adolescents. Using a national representative sample of adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and employing validated psychiatric measures of emotional distress and behavioral problems, we estimate the price elasticity of cigarette demand for adolescents who have behavioral or emotional problems. The results indicate that these adolescents are at least as responsive to cigarette prices as adolescents with no emotional or behavioral problems.     

The case for selective taxes on goods and services in developing countries

Conventional views about the fairness and economic consequences of selective taxes on goods and services (excises) in relation to sales and income taxes need to be re-examined. Excises can often be remarkably well tailored to the peculiar conditions and objectives of developing countries. Experience shows that excises can be administered effectively. If properly designed, therefore, excise systems may prove more capable of imparting progressivity and inducing efficiency than unsuccessful attempts at seemingly more sophisticated forms of tax technology. Excises can contribute substantially to certainty in taxation, a factor of which the social and economic importance can scarcely be overemphasized.     

Environmental and public finance aspects of the taxation of energy

This paper reviews potential applications of environmental taxesin the energy sector. Theoretical and practical arguments forusing environmental taxes are reviewed, and possible arrangementsoutlined for levying environmental taxes on energy. In contrastto most environmental taxes, taxes on energy have the potentialto raise revenues sufficient to alter the constraints and opportunitiesin fiscal policy. A carbon tax levied at a rate of £200per tonne could raise revenues equivalent to about 11 per centof total UK tax receipts, allowing income tax to be halved,or corporation tax abolished. Inappropriate use of the revenues,or their unnecessary dissipation, can greatly add to the costsof environmental policy. But, environmental taxes are unlikelyreduce the overall excess burden from taxation below the currentlevel, and the case for ecotaxes must thus primarily be madein terms of their environmental benefits.     

Are Chinese smokers sensitive to price?

We estimate cigarette price and income elasticities for urban China, 1995. We find an overall cigarette price elasticity of 0.5, which lies between previous estimates. This implies that a 10% increase in price would result in a decline in cigarette consumption of 4.5 billion packs and would raise Y34 billion in additional tax revenue.     

Conflicting Transfer Pricing Incentives and the Role of Coordination

Our study evaluates the role of coordination, at both the government and the firm level, on the transfer prices set by U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) when income taxes and duties cannot be jointly minimized with a single transfer price. We find that either the presence of a coordinated income tax and customs enforcement regime or coordination between the income tax and customs functions alters transfer prices for these firms. Our analyses have implications for both firms and taxing authorities. Specifically, our findings suggest that MNCs might decrease their aggregate tax burdens by increasing coordination within the firm or that governments might increase their aggregate revenues by improving coordinating enforcement across taxing authorities. Our study is novel in that we document, in a specific setting, how coordination influences MNCs’ tax reporting behavior.     

The relative variability of state income and sales taxes over the revenue cycle

The cyclical variability of state income and sales taxes is examined for each state by estimating the degree to which each tax follows the state's overall revenue cycle. Income taxes are found to be consistently more cyclically variable, and less predictable, than sales taxes. Factors explaining differences in cyclical variability across states are then identified in a regression model. States without income taxes have less cyclically variable revenues than states with both income and sales taxes, suggesting that cyclical variability in states without income taxes could not be reduced by broadening the tax base to include an income tax.     

Short‐run marginal medical costs from booze and butts: Evidence from the states

This article uses a panel data set of U.S. states over the 1980 to 2007 period to estimate the demands for medical care, cigarettes, and beer. The estimation process generates own‐price, income, and cross‐price elasticities for all three goods. Implied per capita beer and cigarette consumption elasticities of per capita health care expenditures, suggested by our baseline estimates, are 0.83 and 0.14, respectively. These results are robust to a number of specification tests. Simulations suggest that yearly marginal medical costs amount to approximately $12 per bottle and 27 cents per cigarette in the short run (in 2012 dollars). These results are likely to be driven by the much larger corresponding increases in the consumption of binge drinkers and heavy smokers.

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Tax Incidence in Vietnam*

This paper examines the incidence of taxation in Vietnam, using data from the Living Standards Survey of 1997–1998 and an input–output matrix for 1997. The tax system in 1998 was slightly progressive, taking the equivalent of 7.8percent of spending for households in the lowest, and 10.3percent from households in the highest expenditure quintile. The replacement of the turnover tax by a value‐added tax in January 1999 made the system marginally more progressive, and the falling importance of taxes on trade has had a negligible effect on the overall incidence of the tax system. The tax system is progressive overall because business income taxes fall mainly on better‐off households; and low‐income households rely heavily on home consumption, which is untaxed. Against this, agricultural taxes and fees are highly regressive. The recent phasing out of the agricultural land use tax is making the tax system more progressive; however, efforts since 2004 to limit price increases for motor fuels have effectively provided a relatively greater subsidy to rich than to poor households.     

A new look at indirect taxation in developing countries

This paper reconsiders some of the traditional arguments made against indirect taxes on consumption. Such taxes, despite the extensive criticism to which they have been subjected in the academic literature, remain the mainstay of public finance in most developing countries and are likely to continue to do so. Brief discussions of the design of excise taxes and the incidence of indirect taxes on the poor illustrate the sorts of issues where more detailed tax-specific and country-specific research is needed to replace conventional generalizations about the effects of indirect taxes.     

Dynamics of U.S. State Cigarette Consumption: Evidence from Panel Error Correction Modeling

This study uses state-level data for nearly four decades to study the dynamic demand for cigarettes, focusing especially on the long-run equilibrium relationship between cigarette consumption and its determinants as well as the short-run and long-run causal dynamics. We find the presence of cointegration with the long-run equilibrium, indicating the price elasticity of cigarette demand to be negative and inelastic, the income elasticity is positive and the border smuggling effects are significant, with substantial variations across individual states. Of the various smoking control policies considered, questions remain as to the effectiveness of aggregate anti-smoking initiatives that treat all states alike. Furthermore, the causal dynamics reveal bi-directional causality between cigarette consumption and its determinants. Some policy implications are discussed.     

SOME THOUGHTS ON INDIRECT TAX EFFECTS IN SOUTH AFRICA*

Whereas income tax is the product of 19th Century thought on State revenue, indirect taxes and property taxes go back to ancient times. This is not surprising, for in underdeveloped countries consumption and property are more readily ascertained than income, which is wholly or partly received in the form of subsistence income or payment in kind.     

Policy responses to an overheated housing market: Credit tightening versus transaction taxes

Among Asian economies, Hong Kong has experienced the highest real growth in house prices since the 2010s. Two macroprudential measures, namely credit tightening (loan-to-value ratio cap) and transaction taxes (stamp duty), were introduced to cool down the overheated housing market. This study examines and compares their effectiveness based on a set of constant-quality house price indices. Through an error correction model, we find that credit tightening was able to curb house price growth in the high-price segment, while transaction taxes could not. An explanation is that the exemptions from transaction taxes for those with genuine housing needs could be abused by other market participants. It is easier for buyers to exploit the exemptions to get around the stamp duty than to manipulate the property valuation for mortgage lending. The implication is that the effectiveness of macroprudential measures hinges on whether compliance or exemption can be easily monitored and enforced.     

From edgeworth to Vickrey to Mirrlees: The Vickrey Lecture

William Vickrey'sAgenda for Progressive Taxation is perhaps his best-known work. It stands roughly half way between Edgeworth and Mirrlees, both historically and intellectually. Edgeworth argued that the optimal tax (and transfer) system equalized incomes by taxing above-average incomes at 100 percent and transferring the proceeds to those below average. Mirrlees argued optimality in the presence of disincentive effects, which Edgeworth ignored, placing severe limits on high tax rates. Vickrey proposed 21 tax reforms to make a practical system of personal progressive taxation workable. The two most famous were cumulative lifetime averaging and decreasing power succession taxes. This paper reviews the proposals in light of subsequent intellectual and historical developments. Many of the issues Vickrey explored are relevant today whether the tax system is flat or progressive and whether the base is income or consumption. Distinguished Address presented at the Forty-Seventh International Atlantic Economic Conference, Montreal, Canada, October 7–10, 1999. I especially thank Alan Meltzer for delivering the lecture when I was unable to travel to Montreal.     

Distribution policy under trade liberalisation in Zimbabwe: a CGE analysis

A computable general equilibrium model is used to simulate theeconomy-wide and income distribution effects of transfer policiesto the poor. The model consists of seven income distributiongroups - communal farmers, resettlement farmers, unskilled workers,agricultural wage workers, skilled workers, industrial capitalistsand agricultural profit earners. The first four groups are treatedas a low income group and the last three as a high income group.Experiments to increase each of the low income groups' incomesby 5% using different sources of finance are simulated usingthe model. These are: an increase in government expenditurewithout budget balancing measures; an increase in governmenttransfers offset by a decrease in government spending elsewhere;and an increase in direct or indirect taxes. The results ofsuch experiments indicate that a policy of increasing directtaxes and increasing the government deficit in order to supportthe transfers are favourable in terms of increased incomes inthe short run. A policy of increasing indirect taxes and transferringthe revenue raised to the poor ranks last in terms of reducingincome inequalities. Finally, targeted transfers are generallybetter than universal transfers in terms of their benefits tolow income groups and in reducing income inequalities betweenthe low income and the high income groups.