Distortionary Taxes Research Articles

Optimal Inflation With Corporate Taxation and Financial Constraints

This paper revisits the equilibrium and welfare effects of long-run inflation in the presence of distortionary taxes and financial constraints. Expected inflation interacts with corporate taxation through the deductibility of i) capital expenditures at historical value and ii) interest payments on debt. Through the first channel, inflation increases firms' taxable profits and further distorts their investment decisions. Through the second, expected inflation affects the effective real interest rate negatively, relaxes firms' financial constraints and stimulates investment. We show that, in the presence of collateralized debt, the second effect dominates. Therefore, in contrast to earlier literature, we find that when the tax code creates an advantage of debt financing, a positive rate of long-run inflation is beneficial in terms of welfare as it mitigates the financial distortion and spurs capital accumulation.

Fiscal Transfers in a Monetary Union with Exit Option

It is widely debated whether a monetary union has to be accompanied by a fiscal transfer scheme to accommodate asymmetric shocks. We build a model of a monetary union with a central bank and two heterogeneous countries that are linked by a fiscal transfer scheme with repercussions on monetary policy. A central bank aiming at securing the existence of a monetary union in the presence of asymmetric shocks has to compensate single countries for the tax distortions arising from fiscal transfers. Monetary policy may become more expansionary or restrictive depending on asymmetries between member countries’ inflation aversion and exit costs.

The Second-Best Optimal Gasoline Tax for the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area

This paper uses a representative agent model and Canadian data to calculate the optimal gasoline taxes for Ontario and the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area (GTHA) in a second-best setting with pre-existing distortionary income taxes. The results suggest a second-best optimal gasoline tax (40.57 cents per litre in 2006 Canadian dollars) for the GTHA that is much higher than the current tax rate (24.7 cents per litre), and also higher than recently proposed increases. The resulting value is insensitive to whether the additional revenue is used to reduce taxes on income or to incrementally fund increased public transit infrastructure (The Big Move plan). However, in the absence of a regional tax, the second-best optimal gasoline tax for Ontario as a whole (28.51 cents per litre in 2006 Canadian dollars) is slightly higher than the current tax rate and in-line with proposed increases.

Optimal Taxation with Endogenous Default Under Incomplete Markets

In a dynamic economy, we characterize the fiscal policy of the government when it levies distortionary taxes and issues defaultable bonds to finance its stochastic expenditure. Default may occur in equilibrium as it prevents the government from incurring in future tax distortions that would come along with the service of the debt. Households anticipate the possibility of default generating endogenous credit limits. These limits hinder the government's ability to smooth taxes using debt, implying more volatile and less serially correlated fiscal policies, higher borrowing costs and lower levels of indebtedness. In order to exit temporary financial autarky following a default event, the government has to repay a random fraction of the defaulted debt. We show that the optimal fiscal and renegotiation policies have implications aligned with the data.

How Can Scandinavians Tax So Much?

American visitors to Scandinavian countries are often puzzled by what they observe: despite large income redistribution through distortionary taxes and transfers, these are very high-income countries. They rank among the highest in the world in terms of income per capita, as well as most other economic and social outcomes. The economic and social success of Scandinavia poses important questions for economics and for those arguing against large redistribution based on its supposedly detrimental effect on economic growth and welfare. How can Scandinavian countries raise large amounts of tax revenue for redistribution and social insurance while maintaining some of the strongest economic outcomes in the world? Combining micro and macro evidence, this paper identifies three policies that can help explain this apparent anomaly: the coverage of third-party information reporting (ensuring a low level of tax evasion), the broadness of tax bases (ensuring a low level of tax avoidance), and the strong subsidization of goods that are complementary to working (ensuring a high level of labor force participation). The paper also presents descriptive evidence on a variety of social and cultural indicators that may help in explaining the economic and social success of Scandinavia.

Nasjonalrapport for Norge

Abstract Since the Tax Reform of 1992 Norway has had a tax system of relatively low tax rates and broad tax bases. Norway, along with other Nordic neighbours, did quite early substantially reduce its statutory corporate tax rate - reduced from 50.8 to 28 per cent as part of the 1992 Reform. After 1992 the rate has been constant at 28 until it was reduced marginally to 27 in 2014. Since 1992 the principal objective in designing the corporate tax system has been to ensure resource effectiveness. The role of the corporate (and capital) income tax is therefore to secure public revenue but at the same time minimising distortion. An important feature of the system is therefore that normal return on capital is taxed at the same rate, irrespective of whether it is earned as business income or not. The Report identifies three main challenges to the current corporate tax system. The first challenge discussed is the system’s effects on investments. It cannot be overlooked that the corporate tax rate in Norway is currently higher than the tax rate of many countries Norway is commonly compared with (e.g. other Nordic countries). The Report suggests that this can contribute to a reduction in the level of investment in Norway. The second identified challenge is the tax distortion between debt and equity finance. The Report briefly discusses neutrality in financing through equal tax treatment of debt and equity finance. The Report then discusses the implications and differences of an ACE and a CBIT model in this context. The final challenge discussed is base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). Differences in countries’ tax rules create vast opportunities for tax planning, and largely for the benefit of multinational enterprises (MNEs), inter alia through transfer pricing. The Report suggests that BEPS over time may imply a serious threat in maintaining the revenue from the corporate tax base. The Report then acknowledges that a reduction in the formal tax rate may only to some extent address the problem; which indicates a need to consider other supplementing measures. One such measure is the interest deduction limitation rule, made effective from 2014. The rule was introduced to address profit shifting in MNEs. More generally the Report recognises that Norway cannot freely introduce measures against BEPS following international obligations. Finally the Report mentions the appointment of a Tax Commission in 2013. The Commission’s mandate is to review the Norwegian corporate tax system in light of international developments. The Commission shall deliver its report in the autumn of 2014.

Optimal fiscal policy with heterogeneous agents

The aim of this paper is to study the relationship between the intertemporal behavior of taxes and wealth distribution. The optimal-taxation literature has often concentrated on representative-agent models, in which it is optimal to smooth distortionary taxes. When tax liabilities are unevenly spread in the population, deviations from tax smoothing lead to interest rate changes that redistribute wealth. When a “bad shock” hits the economy, the optimal policy will then call for smaller or larger deficits, depending on the political power of different groups. This effect is particularly relevant in the case of large shocks to government finances, such as wars. Keywords. Optimal taxation, heterogeneous agents, asset prices, distortion, net trade. JEL classification. E62, H21.

Limited Asset Market Participation and the Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policies

In the workhorse DSGE model, the optimal steady state in‡flation rate is near to zero or slightly negative and infl‡ation is almost completely stabilized along the business cycle (Schmitt-Grohe and Uribe, 2011). We reconsider the issue, allowing for agent heterogeneity in the access to the market for interest bearing assets. We show that infl‡ation reduces inequality and that LAMP can justify relatively high optimal in‡ation rates. When we calibrate the share of constrained agents to he wealth Gini index for the US, the optimal in‡flion rate is well above 2%. The optimal response to shocks is also affected. Rather than using public debt to smooth tax distortions, the Ramsey planner front loads tax rates and reduces public debt variations in order to limit the redistributive effects of debt service payments.

Fiscal Policy, Supply Shocks and Economic Expansion in Brazil from 2003 to 2007*

This article has two objectives. The first is to show the impact of distortionary taxes during a period of the economic cycle in Brazil. The second is to show that an explanation for output to grow slower than productivity is the increase in taxes on productive factors: capital and labor. To attain these two objectives, we carried out a study comparing the Brazilian economy with simulated data from the neoclassical model of economic growth with and without distortionary taxes. The empirical results show that the model without taxes predicts stronger growth than observed between 2003 and 2007. This point was addressed using the neoclassical growth model with distortionary taxes. However, this model produces a lower output path than observed. Besides this, both models fail to appropriately account for the behavior of the labor market.

Assessing the Impact of Introducing an ACE Regime - A Behavioural Corporate Microsimulation Analysis for Germany

In their famous Mirrlees review (2011) on reforming the tax system for the 21st century, the authors put forward the introduction of an allowance for corporate equity regime. In recent years, several countries introduced an ACE regime. The main feature of an ACE regime is that it removes tax distortions on marginal investment and finance distortions. Yet, by narrowing the tax base an ACE regime potentially requires an increase in tax rates which might affect location choices and profit shifting activity negatively. In this paper, we employ a microsimulation model to determine the consequences of introducing an ACE regime in Germany. The simulation results show that granting an ACE for corporate income tax purposes results in a revenue loss of about 18%. This could be financed by an increase of the combined profit tax rate by 6 percentage points. At firm level, our analysis illustrates the heterogeneous distribution of the reform effect accross the sample. For 50% of firms between the 25th and 75th percentile, introducing an ACE regime reduces tax payments between 35% and 2%. If the ACE is combined with a tax rate adjustment, the tax effect ranges between -32% and +7.1% for firms between the 25th and 75th percentile. With respect to behavioural responses on decision margins, we find that introducing the ACE reduces the mean debt-ratio by about 1.5 percentage points in the short run. For the capital-stock we arrive at a mean short-term increase of 2.4%. Finally, our computations show that the ACE regime with adjusted profit tax rate cannot be overall tax neutral. In particular, the increase in the profit tax rate required to finance the equity allowance induces intensified outward profit-shifting activities and affects location choices negatively. In the short-run the tax revenue is therefore shown to decline to about 95% of its original level.

Welfare Effects of Distortionary Tax Incentives Under Preference Heterogeneity: An Application to Employer-Provided Electric Cars

This paper presents an approach for the estimation of welfare effects of tax policy changes under heterogeneity in consumer preferences. The approach is applied to evaluate the welfare effects of current tax advantages for electric vehicles supplied as fringe benefits by employers. Drawing on stated preferences of Dutch company car drivers, we assess the short-run welfare effects of changes in the taxation of the private use of these vehicles. We find that the welfare gain of a marginal increase in the taxation of electric company cars is substantial and even outweighs the marginal tax revenue raised.

In praise of wasteful spending

In the presence of distortionary taxation, the destruction of wealth–either by an act of government or an act of God–can be welfare improving, because it increases the supply of labor and therefore (holding government spending constant) allows distortionary taxes to be lowered. We show that under reasonable assumptions, there must be tax rates at which this effect occurs.

Markovian Social Security in Unequal Societies

AbstractIn this paper, we develop a dynamic political‐economic theory of social security. We analytically characterize a Markov perfect equilibrium and find that the interaction between Markovian tax policy and tax distortion on private investment in human capital shapes an intertemporal policy rule, linking taxes positively over time. By allowing current taxpayers to influence their own future social security benefits, the positive intertemporal tax linkage provides political support for social security. Moreover, this positive tax linkage leads to a negative correlation between wage inequality and the size of a nation's social security system, consistent with the empirical pattern observed across OECD countries.

Childhood preventive care, adult healthcare and economic growth: The role of healthcare financing

We analyze the impact of healthcare financing on economic growth, focusing on the issue of the joint public–private financing of healthcare (co-payment). We use an overlapping-generations model with endogenous growth based on health human capital accumulation, where families pay for childhood preventive care and the government can either fully finance or co-finance adulthood curative care. From a growth maximizing perspective, distortionary taxes give an advantage to co-financing. Nevertheless, we prove that, if agents are assumed to be heterogeneous in preferences, full financing can become the best option.

Optimal fiscal policy in a small open economy with limited commitment

We introduce limited commitment into a standard optimal fiscal policy model in small open economies. We consider the problem of a benevolent government that signs a risk-sharing contract with the rest of the world, and that has to choose optimally distortionary taxes on labor income, domestic debt and international transfers. Both the home country and the rest of the world may have limited commitment, which means that they can leave the contract if they find it convenient. The contract is designed so that, at any point in time, neither party has incentives to exit. We define a small open emerging economy as an economy where the limited commitment problem is active in equilibrium. Conversely, a small open developed economy is an economy in which the commitment problem is not active. Our model is able to rationalize some stylized facts about fiscal policy in emerging economies: i) the volatility of tax revenues over GDP is higher in emerging economies than in developed ones; ii) fiscal policy is procyclical in emerging economies; iii) emerging economies may “graduate” from procyclical fiscal policy and adopt countercyclical policies in the long run.

Introducing Carbon Taxes in Russia: The Relevance of Tax-Interaction Effects

Abstract The theoretical literature on the double-dividend concept is mainly focused on pre-existing distortionary taxes in the labour and capital markets; the relevance of interactions with other taxes is often neglected. Using an analytical model and a numerical general equilibrium model, we analyse the welfare effects of carbon taxes and their interaction with other taxes applied in Russia. We find that substituting carbon taxes for labour taxes in Russia can substantially reduce the cost of carbon taxation compared to returning carbon tax revenues to households in lump-sum form and can even result in welfare gains in Russia. In conclusion, introducing carbon taxes has an indirect corrective effect with respect to the distorting effect of export taxation on energy resources. Furthermore, welfare costs of carbon taxation can be significant under the assumption of perfect international mobility of capital. Nevertheless, the cost can be more than compensated in case of a high carbon trade price.

U.S. TREND INFLATION REINTERPRETED: THE ROLE OF FISCAL POLICIES AND TIME-VARYING NOMINAL RIGIDITIES

This paper offers a reinterpretation of the Fed's time-varying implicit inflation target, based on two considerations. The first is that the need to alleviate the burden of distortionary taxation may justify the choice of a positive inflation rate. The second is based on compelling evidence that the degree of price and wage indexation falls with trend inflation. In fact, we find that a proper characterization of the joint evolution of fiscal variables and nominal rigidities has a strong impact on the Ramsey optimal policies, implying optimal inflation dynamics that are consistent with the observed evolution of U.S. trend inflation. By contrast, tax policies have been too lax, especially at the time of the controversial Bush tax cuts.

Policy and Welfare Effects of Within-Period Commitment

Consider the problem of a benevolent government that needs to finance the provision of a public good with distortionary taxes and cannot commit to policies beyond the current period. In such a case, public expenditure is inefficiently low. If the government further loses the ability to set tax rates before production in the period takes place, then it will not internalize how its policy choices distort current factor markets. Thus, to counterbalance the costs of future distortions, it increases public good provision. For a calibrated economy, removing within-period commitment implies a welfare gain worth half-a-percent of yearly consumption. A similar gain can be obtained, if instead, capital depreciation were allowed to be fully deducted from taxable income.

POLICY AND WELFARE EFFECTS OF WITHIN-PERIOD COMMITMENT

Consider the problem of a benevolent government that needs to finance the provision of a public good with distortionary taxes and cannot commit to policies beyond the current period. In such a case, public expenditure is inefficiently low. If the government further loses the ability to set tax rates before production in the period takes place, then it will not internalize how its policy choices distort current factor markets. Thus, to counterbalance the costs of future distortions, it increases public good provision. For a calibrated economy, removing within-period commitment implies a welfare gain worth half a percent of yearly consumption. A similar gain can be obtained if instead, capital depreciation is allowed to be fully deducted from taxable income.

Estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon: Concepts and Results from the DICE-2013R Model and Alternative Approaches

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is an important concept for understanding and implementing climate change policies. This term represents the economic cost caused by an additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions (or more succinctly carbon) or its equivalent. The present study describes the development of the concept, provides examples of its use in current US regulator policies, examines its analytical background, and estimates the SCC using an updated integrated assessment model, the DICE-2013R model. The study estimates that the SCC is $18.6 per ton of CO2 in 2005 US dollars and international prices for the current period (2015). For the central case, the real SCC grows at 3% per year over the period to 2050. The major open issues concerning the SCC continue to be the appropriate discount rate, the potential for catastrophic damages, the impact of incomplete harmonization of abatement policies, and the effects of distortionary taxes.