Fiscal equalization and the tax structure

Fédéric Holm-Hadulla

No 2203, Working Paper Series from European Central Bank

Abstract: Sub-national governments often finance substantial parts of their budgets via taxes on capital or other mobile factors – despite having access to alternative, less distortionary, revenue sources. This paper develops three hypotheses to explain this pattern and tests them in a natural experiment from Germany. The first hypothesis is that fiscal redistribution between jurisdictions lowers the perceived excess burden of distortionary taxation and thereby raises its attractiveness from the perspective of local governments; the second is that a desire for redistribution within jurisdictions induces a shift away from less distortionary tax instruments, despite their superior efficiency properties; the third is that distortionary taxation serves as a Pigouvian intervention to correct externalities. The empirical analysis supports redistribution between jurisdictions as important, but insufficient, to fully explain the observed reliance on distortionary taxation. Among the remaining two hypotheses, the data favour Pigouvian over distributional motives as a further rationale for the local taxation of mobile factors. JEL Classification: H23, H25, H71, H77

Keywords: difference-in-difference; federalism; fiscal equalization; natural experiment; tax structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-pbe and nep-ure
Note: 1624014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Fiscal equalization and the tax structure (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20182203

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