Lifetime Incidence and the Distributional Burden of Excise Taxes

James Poterba

No 2833, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This implies that low-income households in one year have some chance of being higher-income households in other years, and significantly affects the estimated distributional burden of excise taxes. This paper shows that household expenditures on gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco as a share of total consumption (a proxy for lifetime income) are much more equally distributed than expenditures as a share of annual income. From a longer-horizon perspective, excise taxes on these goods are therefore much less regressive than standard analyses suggest.

Date: 1989-01
Note: PE
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Published as The American Economic Review, Vol. 79, No. 2, pp. 325-330, (May 1989).

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Related works:
Journal Article: Lifetime Incidence and the Distributional Burden of Excise Taxes (1989)
Working Paper: LIFETIME INCIDENCE AND THE DISTRIBUTIONAL BURDEN OF EXCISE TAXES (1989)
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