This book brings together research from some of the world s leading tax economists to discuss appropriate directions for tax reform in small open economies. The eminent contributors (including Altshuler, Creedy, Freebairn, Gravelle, Heady, Kalb, Sørensen and Zodrow) investigate the beneficial directions for medium-term tax reform in the light of global developments and lessons from the latest taxation research. In addressing this issue, they review recent advances in both the theoretical and empirical tax literature and reform evidence from individual countries. Topics covered include the impact of taxes on economic performance; international and corporate taxation; personal tax and welfare systems; environmental taxation; and country-specific tax reform experiences. Bringing together leading international experts to explore specific policy reforms, this book will prove essential reading for academics and researchers of public economics, fiscal policy and tax reform. It will also be warmly welcomed both by undergraduate and graduate students of public economics or the economics of taxation, as well as policymakers and government officials working in the area of tax policy.

The rapid emergence of East Asia as an important geopolitical-economic entity has been one of the most visible and striking changes in the international economy in recent years. With that emergence has come an increased need for understanding the problems of interdependence. As a step toward meeting this need, the National Bureau of Economic Research joined with the Korea Development Institute to sponsor this volume, which focuses on the complexities of tax reform in a global economy. Experts from Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Japan, and Thailand, as well as the United States, Canada, and Israel examine the major tax programs of the 1980s and their domestic and international economic effects. The analyses reveal similarities between the United States and countries in East Asia in political constraints on policy making, and taken together they show how growing interdependence interacts with domestic economic and political concerns to affect issues as politically vital as tax reform. Economists, policymakers, and members of the business community will benefit from these studies.

The transition from a command to a market economy requires profound reforms of the tax system. Such a transition will put downward pressures on the level of taxation at a time when public expenditure remains high. This paper outlines the main characteristics of the tax systems in centrally-planned economies. It describes recent changes in those tax systems. Finally, it discusses the major difficulties that will be faced, and the errors that must be avoided, during the transition.

This paper focuses on the macroeconomic and budgetary impact of tax reforms in a New Keynesian two-country model. Our results show that both income and consumption unilateral tax rate reductions do not constitute a "free lunch", in the sense that they have negative budgetary consequences for the country which implements them. In addition, the degree of self-financing implied by our model is in the 81⁄2-24 percent range. Since the degree of self-financing estimated in previous literature was larger, we conclude that in our model not only the "lunch" is not "free", but is also not that "cheap". A comparison of alternative (income-tax versus consumption-tax based) fiscal stimulus packages shows that consumption tax cuts imply a larger short-run impact on domestic output but the income tax cuts stimulate the domestic economy more in the long run. We also look at the implications of a revenue-neutral tax reform in which consumption taxes are increased to compensate for lower income tax collection.

This report investigates how tax structures can best be designed to support GDP per capita growth.

This book presents 15 original papers and commentaries by a distinguished group of tax policy and tax administration experts. Using international examples, they highlight the state of knowledge of tax reform, present new thinking about the issue, and analyze useful policy options. The book’s general goal is to examine the current and emerging challenges facing tax reformers and to assess possible directions future reforms are likely to take. More specific themes include distributional issues, how to tax capital income, how to design specific taxes (e.g., the income tax, the value-added tax, the property tax), how to consider the politics and administrative aspects of tax reform, and how to combine the separate insights into comprehensive tax reform.

This paper examines the effects of taxation of human capital, physical capital and foreign assets in a multi-sector model of endogenous growth. It is shown that in general the growth rate is reduced by taxes on capital and labor (human capital) income. When the government faces no borrowing constraints and is able to commit to a given set of present and future taxes, it is shown that the optimal tax plan involves high taxation of both capital and labor in the short run. This allows the government to accumulate sufficient assets to finance spending without any recourse to distortionary taxation in the long run. When restrictions to government borrowing and lending are imposed, the model implies that human and physical capital should be taxed similarly.

Evolutionary Tax Reform in Emerging Economies: an income-based approach provides one approach to tax reform in emerging economies. Conrad describes the context for tax reform in these economies and outlines the “Standard Approach” to tax reform, an approach that is critically evaluated. Emphasis is placed on revenue generation given to economic efficiency considerations and constraints, institutional and economic, that change through time, and the approach of the work is based on two main elements: policy, for all tax instruments, developed with the individual as the taxpayer, and policy implemented via the use of withholding taxes (advanced taxes), to the extent possible, and via the use of withholding agents, Advanced Payment Agents (APA's). Evolutionary Tax Reform in Emerging Economies examines APAs, direct tax (income tax), and VAT, excises, and tariffs, and discusses topics such as how the base of each tax is defined, how the base might change over time, how APAs are used to collect advanced payments, and how to preserve excise tax collection at the point of production (or import).