The Impact of Tax-Exempt Status: The Supply-Side Subsidies

Schmalbeck provides some background and history of the tax rules governing health care institutions and assess the significance of the subsidies these tax rules create

Firms’ Financial Choices and Thin Capitalization Rules under Corporate Tax Competition

Thin capitalization rules have become an important element in the corporate tax systems of developed countries. This paper sets up a model where national and multinational firms choose tax-efficient financial structures and countries compete for multinational firms through statutory tax rates and thin capitalization rules that limit the tax-deductibility of internal debt flows. In a symmetric tax competition equilibrium each country chooses inefficiently low tax rates and inefficiently lax thin capitalization rules. We show that a coordinated tightening of thin capitalization rules benefits both countries, even though it intensifies competition via tax rates. When countries differ in size, the smaller country not only chooses the lower tax rate but also the more lenient thin capitalization rule.thin capitalization, capital structure, tax competition

Constitutional Design: Separation of Financing and Project Decision

We examine the provision of public projects under separate tax and subsidy rules. We find that tax rules separated from project cum subsidy decisions exhibit several advantages when incentive problems of the agenda-setter are taken into account. In particular, tax rules may prevent the proposal of inefficient projects which benefit only a small lobby group. We propose “redistribution efficiency” as a socially desirable property of proposals and find that tax rules always guarantee redistribution efficiency. We show that rules on subsidies combined with discretion regarding taxes always yield socially inferior proposals. Finally, tax rules induce the agenda-setter to look for potential improvements of public projects.constitutional design, provision of public projects, voting, taxes and subsidies

An Analysis of a Cash Flow Tax for Small Business

This paper analyses whether it might be possible to design a cash flow tax (CFT) for small businesses in New Zealand to replace the existing income tax. Certainly, it is feasible to design the core rules of a CFT that applies to new small businesses. As with all examples of a CFT, these rules are very simple and easy to understand and apply. Integration with existing Goods and Services Tax and Pay-As- You-Earn systems provides significant simplification potential. Designing a set of rules to define what is a “small business” is possible, although there is a risk that these rules would involve some arbitrary features. The main barrier to a CFT relates to the transition from an income tax. Research in New Zealand and overseas has been unable to develop a workable set of rules that involve acceptable fiscal, economic and compliance costs. Designing a set of transition rules from a CFT to an income tax for businesses that cease to be small also appears to be an insurmountable task. Even if the considerable difficulties with a transition could be overcome, integrating a CFT into a world where most of the economy is subject to an income tax would also pose difficulties. There is a risk that the rules needed to maintain CFT treatment on distributions to owners and financers, while at the same time protecting the income tax base, might negate significant portions of the simplification gains from a CFT. Given these difficulties, an income tax will remain necessary, if the Government wants some progressivity in the tax system and to apply “ability to pay“ to determine tax liabilities.Cash flow tax; small business; tax policy

Connecticut's Spending Cap: It's History and An Alternative Spending Growth Rule

State spending growth rules and an alternative for Connecticutstate tax policy, spending growth rules, tax and expenditure limits, TELs

Tax law: rules or principles?

This is the year of simplification of tax legislation and I should like to add my thoughts to the debate. There is nothing new in complaining about the complexity of tax legislation. Every generation does it. To give two examples, the Codification Committee in 1936 looked back longingly to the early days of income tax: ‘... the Statutes of 1842 and 1853 were relatively simple. The growth of legislation since 1907 and its increasing complexity have been in large measure due to the high rates of tax in operation ... The space occupied by the provisions relating to such reliefs and exemptions is now prodigious, and contrasts with the comparative brevity of the earlier code.... Unhappily the actual language in which many of the statutory provisions are framed is so intricate and obscure as to be frankly unintelligible’. In 1955, the Royal Commission said much the same: ‘... the law on the subject of income tax remains voluminous, complicated and obscure.... The history of earlier attempts [to simplify it], however, suggests that the problem may be in fact an intractable one, beyond the reach of recommendations’.

Towards a Practical Cash-Flow Tax

There is a wide consensus amongst economists that a cash-flow tax, in concept, is superior to an income tax. The most difficult problem is the transition, which can create either a huge fiscal cost, very large compliance costs or economic dislocation. This paper explores a set of rules that could potentially avoid economic disruption yet keeps fiscal and compliance costs to a manageable level. Features are a general tax exemption for interest and dividends, a cash-flow tax for increments to the existing capital invested in business activities and continuation of income tax rules for existing capital. The paper identifies general areas where further development of the rules is required.

Designing Optimal Taxes With a Microeconometric Model of Household Labour Supply

This paper is concerned with the empirical analyses of optimal taxation, adopting Equality of Outcome (EO) as well as Equality of Opportunity (EOp) as evaluation criteria. The EOp- and EO-criteria provide alternative methods for summarizing the efficiency-equality trade-off in the distribution of individual welfare. We also compare the results depending on whether we use income or money-metric utility as a measure of individual welfare. We estimate micro-econometric models of household labour supply and corresponding individual welfare measures based on 1995 Norwegian data for both married couples and singles. We then use these models to simulate behavioural responses and welfare gains and losses of various constant-revenue four-parameter tax rules, i.e. the tax rules defined by a lump-sum transfer (positive or negative), two marginal tax rates and a “kink point” that produces the same revenue collected with the observed 1995 rules. Using the various EOp- and EO- critera as a basis for evaluating and comparing these tax rules, EOp- and EO-optimal tax rules are identified.Optimal Taxation, Labour Supply, Microeconometric Models

The Theory of Optimal Taxation: What is the Policy Relevance?

The paper discusses the implications of optimal tax theory for the debates on uniform commodity taxation and neutral capital income taxation. While strong administrative and political economy arguments in favor of uniform and neutral taxation remain, recent advances in optimal tax theory suggest that the information needed to implement the differentiated taxation prescribed by optimal tax theory may be easier to obtain than previously believed. The paper also points to the strong similarity between optimal commodity tax rules and the rules for optimal source-based capital income taxation.optimal taxation; uniform taxation; tax neutrality

Distortionary tax instruments and implementable monetary policy

We introduce distortionary taxes on consumption, labor and capital income into a New Keynesian model with Calvo pricing and nominal bonds. We study the relation between tax instruments and optimal monetary policy by computing simple rules for monetary and fiscal policy when one tax instrument at a time varies, while the other two are fixed at their steady-state level. The optimal rules maximize the second-order approximation to intertemporal utility. Three results emerge: (a) when prices are sticky, perfect inflation stabilization is optimal independently from the tax instrument adopted; (b) the optimal degree of responsiveness of monetary policy to output varies depending on which tax instrument induces fluctuations in the average tax rate; (c) when prices are flexible, fiscal rules that prescribe unexpected variations in the price level to support debt changes are always welfare-maximizing.