Revenue raising taxes: general equilibrium evaluation of alternative taxation in U.S. petroleum industries

Jaime de Melo, Julie Stanton and David Tarr

No 145, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Should the United States increase taxes and tariffs in the energy sector to reduce its federal deficit? This paper uses a twelve sector general equilibrium model to estimate the fiscal effects, and the effects on welfare and employment, of : (i) a 25 percent import tax on imported crude petroleum oil; (ii) a 15 percent excise tax on petroleum products; and (iii) a combination of the two. The excise tax would be the most efficient revenue raising instrument. The 25 percent import tariff would raise US$7.3 billion, while the 15 percent excise tax would raise US$35 billion. Moreover, each dollar raised through a tariff would come at a loss of 25 cents in welfare. Each dollar raised through an excise tax would come at a loss of only one cent in welfare. Acombination of excise taxes, subsidies, and import tariffs would be the least costly way (in terms of welfare) to raise US$20 billion. The optimal tax structure would involve a tariff and a small subsidy on petroleum products to counteract the distortion induced by a tax on oil - the most important input for petroleum products.

Keywords: Economic Theory&Research; Oil Refining&Gas Industry; Public Sector Economics&Finance; Energy and Environment; Environmental Economics&Policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1989-02-28
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... d/PDF/multi_page.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Revenue-Raising Taxes: General Equilibrium Evaluation of Alternative Taxation in U.S. Petroleum Industries (2015)
Journal Article: Revenue-raising taxes: General equilibrium evaluation of alternative taxation in U.S. petroleum industries (1989)
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:wbk:wbrwps:145

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().