Preferences, Tax Structure and Tax Reform, Theory and Evidence

Shlomo Maital

Working Paper from Economics Department, Queen's University

Abstract: When the structure of tax revenues - the proportion of revenues earned by income, consumption and wealth taxes - is treated as a pure public good, a useful framework emerges for analyzing interrelationships among taxpayers' preferences, tax structure and tax reform. The 'optimal' tax structure is defined and used to outline several conjectures about the current shift from direct to indirect taxation, evident particularly in Europe. The structure of the U.S. tax system is shown to have changed little in the past two decades. In contrast, interview surveys over the past thirty years indicate a longstanding shift in taxpayers' preferences towards indirect taxation. Implications are drawn for tax reform.

Pages: 18
Date: 1973
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qed:wpaper:124

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper from Economics Department, Queen's University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Babcock ().