Optimal tax rates and tax design during systemic reform

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Newbery, DM
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/S0047-2727(96)01593-9
• 发表日期: 1997
• 页码: 177-206
• 关键词: optimal tax; simulations; systemic reform

摘要

Budgets in Eastern Europe are under strain as taxes are reformed and receipts fall. Should expenditure be maintained or should personal taxes be cut? This paper asks how optimal tax rates might respond to a transition in which the government becomes less averse to inequality, but the inequality in skills increases. These are roughly offsetting and less important than falling enterprise revenue and the decline in the efficiency of personal taxation, both of which cause a sharp fall in optimal transfers. Tax design consists of balancing the differing inefficiencies of incompleteness in indirect tax coverage against evasion-prone direct taxes.