Search results for "State income tax"
showing 10 items of 16 documents
In-Work Benefits for Married Couples: An Ex-Ante Evaluation of EITC and WTC Policies in Italy
2012
This paper investigates labor supply and redistributive effects of in-work benefits for Italian married couples using a tax-benefit microsimulation model and a multi-sectoral discrete choice model of labor supply. We consider in-work benefits based on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Working Tax Credit (WTC) existing in the US and the UK, respectively. The standard design of these income support mechanisms is however augmented with a premium for two-earner households to avoid potential disincentive effects on secondary earners. Revenue neutral policy simulations show that our reforms may greatly improve the current Italian tax-benefit system in terms of both incentive and redistr…
Tax Evasion and Tax Progressivity
2003
In a pure tax evasion framework in which the monetary penalty is a function of the evaded tax, more progressive income taxes will reduce tax evasion if income has to be declared. However, if tax payments have to be declared, higher tax progressivity will have no effects. Thus, the relationship between tax evasion and tax progressivity depends on whether income or taxes have to be divulged to tax authorities. If the fine is a function of undeclared income, higher tax progressivity will always raise evasion.
Tax evasion, tax progression, and efficiency wages
2004
Abstract More progressive taxes raise employment in imperfect labour markets. However, this prediction is not robust. For example, any employment effect vanishes in a constant profit efficiency wage economy. It is demonstrated that tax evasion opportunities can re-establish positive employment effects of higher tax progression.
Corporate hedging under a resource rent tax regime
2010
Accepted version of an article in the journal: Energy Economics. Published version available on Science Direct: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2009.10.009 In addition to the ordinary corporate income tax, special purpose taxes are sometimes levied to extract abnormal profits arising from the use of natural resources. Such dual tax regimes exist in Norway for oil and hydropower, where the corresponding special purpose tax bases are unaffected by any derivatives payments. Dual tax firms with hedging programs therefore face the risk of potentially large discrepancies between the tax bases for corporate income tax and special purpose tax. I investigate how this tax base asymmetry influences …
Tax Liability and Tax Evasion in a Competitive Labor Market
2005
In a competitive labor market, a change in the legal incidence of a tax on labor will not alter employment if tax obligations are fulfilled. However, this irrelevance result may no longer apply if taxes can be evaded. In particular, a shift from payroll to income taxes will lower employment. This will be the case if workers exhibit constant absolute risk aversion, have a utility function, which is strongly separable in income and the disutility from working, and the penalty for evasion is not proportional to the amount of taxes evaded. Accordingly, tax evasion opportunities can make the legal incidence of a tax on labor an important determinant of its economic incidence.
Inequality Effects of Inflation: The 'Bracket Creep' Effect in the Spanish Income Tax System
2005
The aim of this research is to analyse how inflation induced erosions of the nominally defined items of the tax rules of the Spanish income tax system may change distributional and revenue generating properties of income taxes. We further investigate the effects of the tax reform carried out in 2003. Although the Spanish government claimed that this reform would reduce tax liabilities, this is not so clear as many argue that this reform only offset the effects of inflation suffered by the population since 1999. Using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) data set we aim to shed some light on the above issues through microsimulation techniques. Furthermore, we will also measure the i…
Tax Design in the OECD: A Test of the Hines-Summers Hypothesis
2011
This paper investigates the effects of economic size and trade openness on tax design in the OECD. Using data for 30 OECD countries over the 1965–2007 period, we test the recently proposed Hines-Summers [2009] Hypothesis, according to which the smaller the size and the greater the openness of the economy, the more it will rely on expenditure taxes and the less on income taxes. Our findings show that the Hines-Summers Hypothesis can claim broad, statistically significant, and robust empirical support in the OECD data sets we examined.
Reforming a complicated income tax system: The political economy perspective
2006
Abstract In this paper we analyze the political economy of revenue-neutral income tax reforms when a government aims at cutting back deduction possibilities in exchange for lower tax rates (“tax-cut-cum-base-broadening”). We show that the individual decision whether to support or reject a reform proposal depends on how strongly the voter is affected by all available exemptions, even if the cut of only one single exemption is at stake. The voting outcome in the society depends on the joint distribution of the deductible characteristics. Due to implicit logrolling there are cases where only symmetrical tax reforms are possible, whereas for other properties of the joint distribution only asymm…
Evasion of Tax on Interest Income in a Two-Country Model
2001
t We consider a model where agents can invest money at home and abroad. Their total income comprises interest income from these investments and labor income. Tax on interest income can be evaded — at the risk of being detected and fined. We analyze the optimal portfolio and tax evading decisions of agents with different incomes. In a second step, we scrutinize the optimal government policy. Using different instruments government tries to maximize total tax receipts and to prevent flight of capital as far as possible.
Penalties in the Theory of Equilibrium Tax Evasion: Solving King John’s Problem
2010
The authors characterize equilibria of an income reporting game with bounded returns and no commitment where detected tax evaders are charged the maximally feasible amount. Introducing partial commitment to punishment relief eliminates multiplicity of equilibria. The authors identify a unique limit equilibrium where the poorest citizens evade, intermediate citizens are honest, and the richest citizens are indifferent between evading and truth telling. For small tax rates and auditing cost, committing to a discretionary punishment relief scheme increases expected tax revenue.