Optimal grouping of commodities for indirect taxation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Belan, Pascal; Gauthier, Stephane; Laroque, Guy
• 署名单位: University of London; University College London; Nantes Universite
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2008.01.010
• 发表日期: 2008
• 页码: 1738-1750
• 关键词: indirect tax; Ramsey; aggregation

摘要

Indirect taxes contribute to a sizeable part of government revenues around the world. Typically there are few different tax rates, and the goods are partitioned into classes associated with each rate. The present paper studies how to group the goods in these few classes. We take as given the number of tax rates and study the optimal aggregation (or classification) of commodities of the fiscal authority in a second best setup. The results are illustrated on data from the United Kingdom. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.