Does Tax-Collection Invariance Hold? Evasion and the Pass-Through of State Diesel Taxes

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kopczuk, Wojciech; Marion, Justin; Muehlegger, Erich; Slemrod, Joel
• 署名单位: Columbia University; University of California System; University of California Santa Cruz; University of California System; University of California Davis; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20140271
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 251-286
• 关键词: gas; COMPETITION; elasticity; SALIENCE; MARKETS; prices; POLICY

摘要

In simple models, the incidence of a tax is independent of the identity of the remitting party. We illustrate that this prediction fails to hold if opportunities for evasion differ across economic agents. Second, we estimate how the incidence of state diesel taxes varies with the point of collection, where the remitting party varies across states and over time. Moving tax collection upstream from retailers substantially raises the pass-through of diesel taxes to consumers. Furthermore, tax revenues increase when collecting taxes from wholesalers rather than from retailers, suggesting that evasion is the likely explanation for the incidence result.