Do the Laws of Tax Incidence Hold? Point of Collection and the Pass-through of State Diesel Taxes

Wojciech Kopczuk, Justin Marion, Erich Muehlegger and Joel Slemrod

No 19410, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The canonical theory of taxation holds that the incidence of a tax is independent of the side of the market which is responsible for remitting the tax to the government. However, this prediction does not survive in certain circumstances, for example when the ability to evade taxes differs across economic agents. In this paper, we estimate in the context of state diesel fuel taxes how the incidence of a quantity tax depends on the point of tax collection, where the level of the supply chain responsible for remitting the tax varies across states and over time. Our results indicate that moving the point of tax collection from the retail station to higher in the supply chain substantially raises the pass-through of diesel taxes to the retail price. Furthermore, tax revenues respond positively to collecting taxes from the distributor or prime supplier rather than from the retailer, suggesting that evasion is the likely explanation for the incidence result.

JEL-codes: H22 H26 H71 Q48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-law, nep-pbe and nep-pub
Note: EEE PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Published as Kopczuk, Wojciech, Justin Marion, Erich Muehlegger, and Joel Slemrod. 2016. "Does Tax-Collection Invariance Hold? Evasion and the Pass-Through of State Diesel Taxes." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 8(2): 251-86.

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Related works:
Journal Article: Does Tax-Collection Invariance Hold? Evasion and the Pass-Through of State Diesel Taxes (2016)
Working Paper: Do the Laws of Tax Incidence Hold? Point of Collection and the Pass-Through of State Diesel Taxes (2013)
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