Proportional Tax Rate Research Articles

Analysis of the Effect of Tax Rates and Understanding of Taxation on MSME Taxpayer Compliance in Lamongan Regency

MSMEs are one sector that has the potential to contribute to state tax revenues. This research aimed to examine the influence of tax rates and tax understanding on the level of taxpayer compliance in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the Lamongan Regency. Through a survey approach using a questionnaire, primary data was got from MSME owners as a research sample of 94 respondents. The results could provide a deeper understanding of the factors that influence tax compliance among MSMEs, especially in the Lamongan Regency. Regression analysis was used to test the relationship between tax rate variables, tax understanding, and the level of tax compliance. The results could provide a deeper understanding of the factors that influence tax compliance among MSMEs simultaneously or partially, especially in the Lamongan Regency. The implication of these findings was the importance of managing proportional tax rates and effective tax counseling to encourage MSME taxpayer compliance in the Lamongan Regency. This research contributed to further understanding of tax factors that could form a better tax environment for MSME growth and Regional Tax revenues.

The VAT in practice: equity, enforcement, and complexity

The value-added tax (VAT) is meant to be an efficient and self-enforcing tax on consumption. Yet, being a rather sophisticated tax, the VAT can also be complex and costly to administer. By examining the case of Rwanda, this paper assesses the extent to which the VAT’s potential materialises in the context of a lower-income countries. Using a mixed-methods approach, which combines qualitative information from focus group discussions with the analysis of administrative and survey data, this paper makes two contributions. First, it documents reporting inconsistencies in VAT data, providing new evidence on how weak capacity prevents tax administrations in lower-income countries from reaping the full benefits of the VAT. Second, it shows that the VAT, as applied in practice, differs substantially from its theoretical functioning. This generates differences in tax burdens across firms, despite a proportional tax rate, with important distributional implications. We also document that the VAT chain often breaks down, with implications on the VAT’s efficiency.

РЕФОРМИРОВАНИЕ ПОДОХОДНОГО НАЛОГА В РОССИИ

The social orientation and economic significance of income tax gives it a special place in the tax system of the state. Throughout its existence, income taxation has been in constant reform, including in terms of the tax rate. The article provides a periodization of the application of progressive and proportional tax rates in Russia from 1812 to 2021. The modern stage, which is marked by a gradual transition to a progressive tax rate on personal income, is covered in detail. Changes in the direction of raising the tax rate, undertaken in Russia from 2021, will affect only a small share of the country's population so far. However, the initiated reform may lead to a more significant and tangible transformation of the tax rate for taxpayers in the future.

Taxation and human capital accumulation with endogenous mortality

We study the impact of taxation on human capital when the mortality of household agents is endogenously determined based on their past levels of consumption. We characterize and solve the dynamic optimization problem facing household agents in the economy. Even though all households in our economy have identical preferences and have access to the same human capital accumulation technology, with endogenous mortality, there is a possibility of multiple equilibria. Households with an initial endowment of human capital above a threshold choose to accumulate human capital, while those below the threshold end up with very low levels of human capital. We use empirical estimates of the income–mortality relationship in Canada, France, and the US to simulate our model. When income has a strong protective effect against mortality, we find that multiple equilibria are empirically plausible. Our simulations suggest that changes in proportional tax rates have more than twice the impact on aggregate human capital in the endogenous mortality model compared to the infinite horizon model.

Effective tax rates and firm size in Ethiopia

AbstractThe literature on Effective Tax Rates (ETRs) focuses on high‐ and middle‐income countries, but there is very little evidence on low‐income countries. This article addresses this gap with new evidence from Ethiopia. We investigate corporate ETRs in Ethiopia and whether the distributional effects they have in practice are in line with the corporate tax policy design. We calculate ETRs in line with the literature in this field, using profit tax at the numerator and gross profit at the denominator. We then analyse ETRs not only using panel data, focusing particularly on their relation to firm size, but also including other explanatory variables. Our main result is that, despite a proportional tax rate, small firms face a higher effective tax burden than larger firms, while middle‐sized firms face the lowest burden of all. We highlight that tax systems can have practical implications that differ largely from their policy design, due to compliance costs and imperfect enforcement. Measures to reduce compliance costs for small firms are particularly recommended.

A Behavioral Economic Study of Tax Rate Selection by the Median Voter: Can the Tax Rate Be Influenced by the Name of the Publicly Provided Private Good?

This paper presents the results of a behavioral economics study to test if the tax rates submitted to finance the public provision of a private good are influenced by changing the name of the private good. A revealed-preference laboratory decision-making experiment is used to test if participants choose significantly different tax rates to support provision of a private good named as a health care investment compared to an identical good named as a neutral monetary investment. Although some previous studies focusing on both framing and context effects find differences associated with health versus non-health environments, these studies have not involved voting over public provision of a private good. In our experimental environment, participants with different income endowments provide their preferred proportional tax rates for financing public provision of a private good in either a neutral or a health context. The implemented tax rate is the median preferred tax rate, and once the budget is determined, each participant receives the same quantity of the publicly provided private good. In each context, the payoff functions are the same. The only difference between the contexts is the name attached to the publicly provided private good, regardless of the name attached to the publicly provided private good, consuming it imposes no externalities. This controls for the positive externality characteristics of many health care goods, but not for preferences evoked by the merit good character of health care which factor into decisions about the public provision of health care. We find that the theoretical predictions of the median voter model are generally supported by the data. However, the conjecture that the implemented tax rate would be affected by context is not supported by the results.

Transparency diminishes framing-effects in voting on redistribution: Some experimental evidence

This study analyzes whether enabling people to get informed about redistributive consequences is an effective measure to prevent equivalence framing in the domain of voting on redistribution. Utilizing the redistribution mechanism of the Meltzer-Richard model, an equivalent frame is induced by letting subjects vote either on a proportional tax rate or an outcome equivalent minimum net income. In a series of laboratory experiments, we find that framing effects both on the individually preferred and collectively agreed level of redistribution are tremendously strong if the information tool is not available (low transparency condition). Once subjects have access to the information tool (high transparency condition), the framing effect on individually preferred tax rates is significantly reduced, and after group communication, the framing effect is washed out from the collective decision. High transparency increases redistribution if subjects have to set a redistributive tax rate and lowers redistribution if subjects have to set a minimal income. Thus, the availability of the information tool has an asymmetric effect on the level of redistribution.

Transparency Diminishes Framing-Effects in Voting on Redistribution: Some Experimental Evidence

This study analyzes whether enabling people to get informed about redistributive consequences is an effective measure to prevent equivalence framing in the domain of voting on redistribution. Utilizing a simplified version of the Meltzer-Richard model, an equivalent frame is induced by letting subjects vote either on a proportional tax rate or an outcome equivalent minimum net income. In a series of laboratory experiments we find that framing effects both on the individually preferred and collectively agreed level of redistribution are tremendously strong if the information tool is not available (low transparency condition). Once subjects have access to the information tool (high transparency condition), the framing effect on individually preferred tax rates is significantly reduced, and after group communication, the framing effect is washed out from the collective decision. Thus, the availability of the information tool has an asymmetric effect on the level of redistribution if subjects have to set a redistributive tax rate and lowers redistribution if subjects have to set a minimum income level.

A simple approach to overcome the problems arising from the Keynesian stability condition

The Keynesian stability condition is a necessary assumption for the IS equilibrium concept to make economic sense. With reasonable values for the saving parameter(s), however, it typically implies excessively strong multiplier effects. This is more than a cosmetic issue, not least because any simulation study of an otherwise ambitious model will thus be fraught with severe problems along some of its dimensions. The present paper demonstrates that by introducing proportional tax rates on production, corporate income and personal income, the multipliers will be considerably dampened. Within an elementary Kaleckian framework, it also advances a fairly satisfactory numerical calibration.

Tax Regimes and Capital Gains Realizations

This paper contrasts the individual capital gains realization behavior between progressive and proportional tax regimes. Using a longitudinal panel of over 288,000 individuals in Sweden, I exploit the 1991 tax reform in Sweden that changed progressive capital gains tax rates ranging from 12% to 80% to a proportional tax rate of 30%. Using the proportional tax system to control for non-tax reasons to realize capital gains, I show that individuals are highly responsive to capital gains tax incentives created by temporary income changes under a progressive capital gains tax. More specifically, I find that individuals with temporary negative (positive) income changes sell (hold) shares that they would hold (sell) in the absence of temporary tax incentives. Further, I show that high-income individuals are more tax sensitive than low-income individuals. This result indicates that low-income individuals facing temporary negative income changes could trade predominantly for non-tax reasons.

Cross-base tax elasticity of capital gains

ABSTRACTThis paper studies the cross-base tax elasticity of capital gains realizations to labour income taxes when capital gains are taxed at a separate proportional tax rate. Using a longitudinal panel of over 265 000 individuals in Sweden, this paper shows in a regression kink design that labour income taxes affect capital gains realizations in two ways. An increase in the marginal labour income tax rate increases the likelihood of realizing capital gains and the amount of realized capital gains. One implication of this result is that labour income taxes have a lock-out effect but that the magnitude of this effect is smaller than the lock-in effect of the actual capital gains tax.

Elasticity of taxable income. A case study for the Czech Republic

Elasticity of taxable income has increasingly become an important subject matter for economists in recent times. This study provides an estimate for the Czech Republic by exploiting panel data for corporate income tax rates between 2004 and 2009. The severity of the tax evasion and avoidance issue in this country triggers a question about the existence of the elasticity itself. The uniqueness of this study also stems from its focus on proportional tax rates while other influential studies examine this subject for progressive taxation. The result of this research supports a hypothesis about indifference between taxable incme decision and the size of the tax rate; about fifty percent of the observations in the sample are not subject to taxation. The high level of tax avoidance could explain such an outcome intensifying the necessity to fight this fiscal policy phenomenon.

The poverty burden: a measure of the difficulty of ending extreme poverty

The commonly used poverty gap measure is extended to derive and analyse the properties of a poverty burden measure to address the question of whether the elimination of poverty is a feasible objective, given sufficient political commitment. The resources potentially available to address poverty may be measured by the total amount by which the incomes of the non-poor exceed the same poverty line. The ratio of the poverty gap to the resources potentially available is equal to the proportional tax rate on incomes in excess of the poverty line that would be required to fund a transfer sufficient to raise the incomes of all poor people to the poverty line. We refer to this ratio as the ‘poverty burden’ and provide some empirical evidence of what is required to eliminate poverty.

Cross-Base Tax Elasticity of Capital Gains

This paper studies the cross-base tax elasticity of capital gains realizations to labor income taxes when capital gains are taxed at a separate proportional tax rate. Using a longitudinal panel of over 265,000 individuals in Sweden, this paper shows in a regression kink design that labor income taxes affect capital gains at the extensive and intensive margins. An increase in the marginal labor income tax rate increases the likelihood of realizing capital gains and the amount of realized capital gains. One implication of this result is that the excess burden of labor income taxation is affected by cross-base tax elasticities.

Basic Income and Negative Income Tax: A Comparison with a Simulation Model

AbstractAn explicit unconditional basic income linked with a proportional tax rate and corresponding negative income tax schedule are generally thought to produce an equal distribution of incomes. They are so to say mathematically uniform systems. If we try to implement these schedules on an existing system of social transfers and taxes, the results may nevertheless be different. One problem is that taxes are generally calculated on yearly basis but social transfers are paid on monthly or even daily basis. There can be also other differences in the implementation. In this paper a simulation experiment with the Finnish tax and transfer system is presented. Two levels of basic income are defined: a normal basic income for adults over 18 years and a bit higher basic income (basic pension) for pensioners. Two alternative simulations are made: one corresponding to an unconditional basic income model and the other corresponding to the idea of negative income tax. Then the distributional effects and various transfer and income flows are studied.

Endogenous social discount rate, proportional carbon tax, and sustainability: Do we have the right to discount future generations' utility?

This paper examines a serious issue - whether future generations of utility should be discounted. The issue is of vital importance because future generations will never have the opportunity to reveal their preference regarding the current resource allocation and yet this will ultimately affect their utility. This paper addresses with this issue in the context of the phenomenon of global warming that is crucially connected with the emission and accumulation of CO2. The analysis focuses on how the social optimum is attained under the constraint of sustainability and reveals the following relationship between the optimal policies: not discounting utility in social planning corresponds to adopting the socially optimal carbon tax rate in a decentralized economy. We also prove that the optimal carbon tax regime satisfies time consistency, indicating that policy is Pareto efficient for every generation given the sustainability constraint. In addition, it is shown that the theory can be extended to apply to an infinite horizon. Finally, the second-best proportional carbon tax rates are calculated using available data. The result astonishingly reveals that even if we apply a social discount rate of 5 per cent to annum in the planning economy, it is still equivalent to levying 32 per cent proportional carbon tax rate. Considering the actual absorption capacity of oceans concerning CO2, we can never be too prudent in discounting the utility of future generations with regard global climate change. This fact indicates the need for urgent introduction of a proportional carbon tax.

Taxing women: A macroeconomic analysis

Based on well-known evidence on labor supply elasticities, several authors have concluded that women should be taxed at lower rates than men. We evaluate the quantitative implications and merits of this proposition. Relative to the current system of taxation, setting a proportional tax rate on married females equal to 4% (8%) increases output and married female labor force participation by about 3.9% (3.4%) and 6.9% (4.0%), respectively. Gender-based taxes improve welfare and are preferred by a majority of households. Nevertheless, welfare gains are higher when the U.S. tax system is replaced by a proportional, gender-neutral income tax.

Tax Regimes and Capital Gains Realizations

This paper contrasts the individual capital gains realization behavior between progressive and proportional tax regimes. Using a longitudinal panel of over 288,000 individuals in Sweden, I exploit the 1991 tax reform in Sweden that changed progressive capital gains tax rates ranging from 12% to 80% to a proportional tax rate of 30%. Using the proportional tax system to control for non-tax reasons to realize capital gains, I show that individuals are highly responsive to capital gains tax incentives created by temporary income changes under a progressive capital gains tax. More specifically, I find that individuals with temporary negative (positive) income changes sell (hold) shares that they would hold (sell) in the absence of temporary tax incentives. Further, I show that high-income individuals are more tax sensitive than low-income individuals. This result indicates that low-income individuals facing temporary negative income changes could trade predominantly for non-tax reasons.

A Study on the Introduction of Proportional and Differential Tax Rates in the Value Added Tax - Focusing on Legislation Cases of Foreign Countries -

A Study on the Introduction of Proportional and Differential Tax Rates in the Value Added Tax - Focusing on Legislation Cases of Foreign Countries -

Ion and Public-Good Provision in a Diverse Society

I analyze the postelectoral coalition formation process in a two-dimensional political environment. The two dimensions are the degree of a proportional tax rate and the degree of a group-specific public good. Parties are office-motivated and care instrumentally about policy. I analyze when stable coalitions exist and obtain that for that to occur office benefits should exceed a certain level. I analyze how this critical level and the set of policies implemented are affected by the income levels and the degree of diversity. For both office- and policy-motivated parties the same result holds, but the critical level might be lower for the latter.