Capital Income Tax Research Articles

Marginal Cost of Public Funds under the Presence of Informality

In this paper, we investigate the behavior of the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) for different taxes under the presence of informality. We build a dynamic general equilibrium model with formal and informal sectors and allow the government to use consumption, capital, and labor income taxes to raise revenue. Using country-level data on taxes, we calibrate and measure MCF for a cross-section of economies. Our results show that different taxes have distinct cost responses to changes in the informal sector size in each country: while MCF of the consumption tax decreases with the increase in the informal sector size, the MCF of the income taxes, capital and labor, display an opposite behavior. Moreover, omitting the informal sector results in an underestimation in the MCF of capital income tax and overestimation in that of the consumption tax.

Company Income Tax and Business Investment

AbstractThere are many financial paths that link different savers who provide funds to different business investors. Path options considered include combinations of corporate and unincorporated businesses, resident and non‐resident savers, debt and equity, and distributed and retained earnings. These different financial paths have different mixes of attributes valuable to savers and investors. As a result, the options are imperfect substitutes. Australian capital income taxation varies across the different financial path options. As a result, effective tax rates and the effects of reforms to company income tax vary across the funding options. Together, the imperfect substitute and different tax treatments reduce the impact of proposed changes in company income taxation on incentives to, and rewards from, business investment.

Normative Capital Cost Recovery for a Realization-based Income Tax

Tax policy makers and academics in the United States traditionally focus on tax systems based on income and consumption. As a necessary adjunct to these fundamental tax base structural principles, these commentators have adopted complementary accounting principles in order to identify and compute the amounts of income and consumption to be taxed during a designated taxable period. For example, most economists and tax policy commentators assert that an accretion-measured income tax comprehensively and accurately measures economic income. Most commentators also accept the proposition that a tax based on income but measured only by cash flows (a cash flow income tax) is a practical surrogate for a theoretical consumption tax. Following these traditions, this article assumes that an accretion-measuredincome tax (AMIT), and a cash-flow measured income tax (CFIT) are pure taxbase paradigms in which the paired tax base structural and accounting principlestheoretically complement each other.The U.S. income tax base, however, employs structural and accounting principles that differ from both the AMIT and CFIT base paradigms. Like an AMIT base, the U.S. income tax purports to tax “income” as opposed to “consumption;” but unlike an AMIT base, it does not as a general rule employ accretion accounting in order to measure “income.” Similarly, unlike a tax on consumption that is measured by cash flows, the U.S. income tax is not fundamentally structured to tax consumption; nor does it use cash flow accounting as the primary means of measuring the “income” that it taxes.With respect to capital income taxation in general, the U.S. income tax base may be characterized as a realization-based income tax (RBIT) because it uses the principle of realization to define and measure capital income. Overall, three major structural and accounting principles distinguish a RBIT from either the AMIT or CFIT capital income taxation paradigm. All of these principles have important capital income taxation policy implications. However, this article focuses on those principles in the context of short-lived completely wasting income-producing assets because their application is fairly clear in this context. In addition, an analysis of these assets allows this article to highlight and isolate the important issue of RBIT cost recovery policy.

Ed Kleinbard’s Business Enterprise Income Tax: How Well Does It Solve the Problem of How to Tax Capital Income?

Ed Kleinbard’s Business Enterprise Income Tax (BEIT) would eliminate many of the distortions in current US taxation of investment income, including choices between debt and equity finance and among dividends, stock buybacks, and retained earnings; business choices among alternative assets and between investing in the United States and overseas; decisions on exchanging asset ownership; and choices among how firms are organized. But, similar with other proposed reforms, BEIT is less effective in taxing economic rents earned by the wealthiest individuals. BEIT fits with Kleinbard’s overall view that average citizens would benefit from a larger government funded by moderately progressive taxes.

Comparative Assessment of Capital Income Taxation in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Belarus

The marginal effective tax rates (METR) are determined in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Belarus. The METR have high sensitivity from the tax depreciation rate, profit tax and interest rates for all countries. Sensitivity of the METR from inflation is high in Georgia and Belarus but is less in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. The calculations show that the current tax burden in Belarus is higher than in other countries (excluding debt financing). The current tax depreciation rate does not provide additional incentives for investment activity in these countries. The calculations are approximate, but they show that the tax depreciation rate depends on the inflation rate to create additional incentives for marginal investment. Georgia has the highest opportunities to increase investment activities by decreasing the real interest rate. Kazakhstan has greater tax advantages in manufacturing than Azerbaijan.

Laffer curves in emerging market economies: The role of informality

How much tax revenue can be raised in developing countries with a large informal sector? In this paper, we introduce informality into a two-sector neoclassical growth model and characterize the Laffer curves under labor, consumption, and capital income taxation. The model is calibrated for five Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, and we quantify how informality affects the fiscal space under each tax rate. We show that the peak of the Laffer curves crucially depends on the elasticity of substitution between formal and informal goods. For commonly used values of this elasticity, the tax revenue implications of informality are found to be severe. Using labor taxes, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru can only increase tax revenues within the range 2%−4%. While Chile can maximally increase tax revenues by 11% with higher labor taxes, Brazil can increase tax revenues by 6% by cutting labor taxes. The budgetary gains under capital income taxation are found to be even smaller, where the fiscal space does not exceed 4% in any country. Using consumption taxes, Mexico and Chile can maximally increase tax revenues by 8% and 3%, respectively. For the remaining countries, the fiscal space is found to be less than 1%. Finally, the iso-revenue analysis suggests that in order to maximize total tax receipts in Latin America, governments should in general raise labor and consumption taxes and cut capital income taxes.

Ageing and Welfare State Policy: A Macroeconomic Perspective

It has been widely recognized that population ageing could generate structural changes centered around a dwindling labor force, on one hand, and an expanding dependency on the generosity of the welfare state, on the other hand. Welfare state policy related to population ageing entails both fiscal and migration issues. This paper employs a general-equilibrium model with a policy making focus to help illuminate the mechanisms governing social benefit provision, labor income taxation, capital income taxation, and migration curbs on low-skilled and high-skilled workers, all driven by population ageing. Greater generosity of the welfare state comes together with a more liberal migration policy when incentives are compatible with the interests of the majority of voters. The effects of ageing on the tax and benefit sides of the welfare state depend on the number of dependents in the population and whether the country is a capital importer (in which case the capital tax burden is shared with foreigners) or a capital exporter (in which case the age-related wage increase skews taxation towards labor income). The tax-benefit narraive is about factor supplies. Low ageing evolution correlates with a relatively labor-abundant country (low retirement), which turns into a labor-scarce country (high retirement). Parallel to the evolution of the labor force, a country that is a capital importer (with a high rate of return) becomes a capital exporter (with a low rate of return). Greater demand for social benefits from an ageing population is balanced against the rising costs of labor income taxation and capital income taxation.

Efficiency Versus Insurance: Capital Income Taxation and Privatizing Social Security

We study the interactions between capital income tax and social security privatization in the context of rising longevity. In an economy with idiosyncratic income shocks, redistributive defined benefit social security provides some insurance against income uncertainty. This insurance comes at the expense of efficiency loss due to labor supply distortions. The existing view in the literature states that reducing this distortion by introducing (partially funded) defined contribution social security would reduce welfare because the loss of insurance and the transitory fiscal gap dominate the efficiency gains. However, prior research financed the transitory costs of the reform by taxing consumption. We show that in the context of longevity, capital income taxation provides a superior alternative: welfare gains are sufficient to outweigh the loss of insurance and transitory fiscal gap. We provide explanations for a mechanism behind this result and we reconcile our results with the earlier literature.

Efficiency Versus Insurance: Capital Income Taxation and Privatizing Social Security

Efficiency Versus Insurance: Capital Income Taxation and Privatizing Social Security

Personal Income Taxes in the Middle East and North Africa: Prospects and Possibilities

With the exception of a few North African countries, personal income taxes (PITs) play little or no role in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), often yielding less than 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in revenue. This paper examines how PITs have evolved in recent decades, and what they might look like in the next 20 years. Throughout the region, top marginal tax rates on labour and business income of individuals have declined substantially, a trend that mirrors reductions in advanced and developing economies. Taxation of passive capital income has changed very little, and the revenue contribution from this source remains low throughout the region, averaging less than 1 percent of GDP and concentrated in oil-importing non-fragile states. Social security contributions (SSCs) have increased in importance in nearly all MENA countries, and some countries have introduced additional payroll taxes and levies. The combination of reduced marginal tax rates, light taxation of income from capital and business activities, and increases in SSCs has resulted in income tax systems that create disincentives to work and incentives for informality, and contribute little to government revenue and income redistribution. Given differences in economic and political structures, demographics, and starting points, the path to PIT and SSC reforms will vary across the region. Countries with relatively mature PIT/SSC systems, where revenue performance has improved in the past two decades, will increasingly need to balance revenue and equity objectives against efficiency objectives (in particular, labour market incentives and informality). Countries without a PIT will have to weigh whether a consumption tax/SSC system that mimics a flat tax on labour income is sufficient to diversify revenue away from oil, and whether to adopt PITs to address rising income and wealth inequality. Finally, fragile states, which face more political volatility and have weaker fiscal institutions than non-fragile states, will have to focus on simplicity of tax design and collection to be able to raise revenue from PITs.

Explaining the Decline in the US Labor Share: Taxation and Automation

This study provides evidence for the US that the secular decline in the labor share is not only explained by technical change or globalization, but also by the dynamics of factor taxation, automation capital, and population growth. First, we empirically find indications of co-integration for the 1974-2008 period. Permanent effects on factor shares emanate from relative factor taxation. The latter also have a lasting effect on the use of robots. Variance decompositions reveal that taxing contributes to changes in the two income shares and in automation capital. Second, we analyse and calibrate a neoclassical growth model extended to include factor taxation, automation capital, and capital adjustment costs. The model is able to replicate the dynamics of the observed functional income distribution in the US during the 1965-2015 period. Counterfactual experiments suggest that the fall in the labor share would have been significantly smaller if labor and capital income tax rates had remained at their respective level of the 1960s.

The Wealth Tax and the Tax Mix

This paper explores the potential role for a wealth tax as part of the mix of taxes applying to assets in the Canadian tax system. The existing system taxes assets in a variety of ways. Asset incomes, such as interest, dividends, capital gains, and profits, are taxed in the income tax system, albeit imperfectly. The value of assets is taxed by capital taxes on selective types of corporations and by the property tax on residential and non-residential property. Taxes applying to asset transfers include the deemed realization of capital gains on death as well as probate fees. There is neither a general tax on wealth nor a tax on wealth transferred through bequests. There are some glaring shortcomings of existing taxes on assets, such as the preferential treatment of capital gains, the exclusion of imputed returns, and the absence of a tax on inheritances. The authors argue that these deficiencies are best addressed by reforming the capital income tax system and introducing an inheritance tax rather than implementing an annual wealth tax.

Taxation and the external wealth of nations: Evidence from bilateral portfolio holdings

This paper examines the impact of capital income taxation on the composition of foreign portfolio investment and on long-term external wealth. Using data on bilateral portfolio positions for a sample of 37 countries over the period 2001–2017, we find that capital gains and dividend taxation reduce the share of equities in foreign investments, while interest taxation increases this share. To examine the potential effects of capital income tax reform on long-term external wealth, we simulate tax reforms in which each country replaces its actual capital income tax rates by the average tax rates in the sample. We find that the external wealth effects of such reforms can be very substantial, with estimates ranging from +8.5% for Japan to −10% for New Zealand.

Phase-Dependent Monetary and Fiscal Policy

This paper studies how the effects of monetary and fiscal policy vary depending on the business cycle phase. It shows that in a medium-scale DSGE model, estimated on US data, monetary policy has a stronger impact on the economy in downturns and booms. Labor and capital income taxes display similar patterns. Government expenditure shocks and consumption tax shocks, on the contrary, have a stronger impact on output in depressions and recoveries. The paper also shows that accounting for the source of business cycle fluctuations is potentially important when assessing state-dependence in policy transmission.

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.

Investor asset valuation under a wealth tax and a capital income tax

We study how a capital income tax and a wealth tax affect an investor's valuation of a company's stock in an efficient international capital market. Using a one-period model, a model of infinite horizon where the asset generates a future cash flow that is a martingale, and a finite horizon model where we abandon the martingale assumption, we find that a wealth tax and/or a capital income tax do not lead investors to value an investment differently from untaxed investors. Investors who seek a higher pre-tax rate of return due to capital taxes harm their own wealth.

The economic arguments for and against a wealth tax

AbstractThis paper asks when a wealth tax would, in principle, be a desirable part of the tax system, setting aside the practicalities and politics that would be crucial in reality. The case for a one‐off wealth tax is simple. If it were unexpected and credibly one‐off – a major challenge in practice – this would be an efficient way to raise revenue and could be used to address existing wealth inequality. Whether such a tax is desirable hinges on whether it is considered fair, about which reasonable people will differ. Making the case for an annual wealth tax, which would affect future wealth accumulation as well as existing wealth, is less straightforward. It requires explaining why it is better to tax the same wealth every year – penalising those who save – rather than raising the same revenue by taxing all sources of wealth once when they are received (and/or when they are spent). Such a case can be made based on subtle arguments for why taxing wealth might help to ease the trade‐off between redistribution and work incentives; and a wealth tax might also be justified if holding on to wealth, rather than spending it, benefits the holder or harms others. These theoretical arguments probably justify some taxation of wealth in principle, though we have little basis for judging the appropriate level, so only part of the theoretical benefit could be attained. It is questionable whether the achievable benefits outweigh the costs of an imperfect wealth tax in practice.There are strong reasons to radically reform how we currently tax the sources/uses of wealth; this includes reforming capital income taxes in order to properly tax high returns. An annual wealth tax would be a poor substitute for doing that. But to the extent that taxes remain imperfect and that responses to a wealth tax would not affect revenue from other taxes (such as on income, expenditure and bequests), there may be a benefit to adding a wealth tax in order to diversify sources of revenue and prevent any one tax getting too high – though that must be weighed against the extra administrative burdens of having another tax.

The Government in SNA-Compliant DSGE Models

Abstract The government size in developed economies expanded remarkably after the Second World War. This growth shaped the role of the government as a key player in the economic activity and the aggregate dynamics of a country. However, the way in which the government is represented in DSGE models is often reductive, containing homogeneous public spending and a few distortionary taxes without clear counterparts in fiscal data. This paper shows how dynamic general equilibrium models can incorporate a detailed government sector as defined in the System of National Accounts (SNA). This government features six types of public expenditures (i.e. the government’s intermediate consumption, public wage bill, debt service, public investment, and transfers to households both in-kind and other-than-in-kind), and five distortionary taxes (i.e. consumption tax, capital and labor income taxes, corporate tax and social contributions).

Some Reflections to Enabling International Institutions to Tax Capital Income. Reaction to L. Ahrens, L.Hakelberg & T. Rixen

Some Reflections to Enabling International Institutions to Tax Capital Income. Reaction to L. Ahrens, L.Hakelberg & T. Rixen

Tax cuts in open economies

A reduction in capital tax rates generates substantial dynamic responses within the framework of the standard neoclassical growth model. The short-run revenue loss after a tax cut is partly — or, depending on parameter values, even completely — offset by growth in the long-run, due to the resulting incentives to further accumulate capital. We study how the dynamic response of government revenue to a tax cut changes if we allow a Ramsey economy to engage in international trade: the open economy's ability to reallocate resources between labor-intensive and capital-intensive industries reduces the negative effect of factor accumulation on factor returns, thus encouraging the economy to accumulate more than it would do under autarky. We explore the quantitative implications of this intuition for the US in terms of two issues recently treated in the literature: dynamic scoring and the Laffer curve. Our results demonstrate that international trade enhances the response of government revenue to tax cuts by a relevant amount. In our benchmark calibration, a reduction in the capital-income tax rate has virtually no effect on government revenues in steady state.