It is frequently argued that it would be beneficial to move the tax mix towards greater reliance on consumption taxes, with offsetting reductions in income taxes. Proponents argue that this would increase the incentives to “work, save, and invest” and would help improve productivity growth....

Microsimulation models of the LOTTE system are key tools for tax policy-making in Norway and are extensively used in the budget process. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the different modules in the LOTTE family - a non-behavioral tax-benefit model for personal income tax...

It comes as no surprise to any observant person in this country that there is a wide disparity in our federal income tax treatment of persons who have differing incomes and financial resources. But while much has been written on tax law complexity and inefficiency, little or nothing has been...

Non-tax legal rules regulating the workplace, the financial sector, real property, and many other areas affect the ability of governments to collect revenues and provide public goods. Yet tax-collection considerations rarely enter into economic analyses of non-tax legal rules. Usually,...

In the past year, a number of new financial transactions (such as the Fantex, Upstart and Pave transactions) have emerged that allow individuals to raise funds by offering a percentage interest in their future earnings. Unlike traditional lending arrangements, these structures essentially enable...

Taxpayers who hide assets abroad to evade taxes present a serious enforcement challenge for the United States. In response, the United States has developed a family of initiatives that punish and rehabilitate non-compliant taxpayers, raise revenues, and require widespread reporting of offshore...

Since the turn of the current century, leading transnational organizations and academic scholarship have identified tax competition among countries as one of the scourges of the international tax regime. Both the EU and the OECD have warned that tax competition erodes the tax bases of Member...

At their core, taxpayer rights are human rights. They are about our inherenthumanity.—Nina E. OlsonThe federal income tax system does not exist for statutes, regulations, codes, enforcement, assessments, collection, redistribution, procedures, publications, liens, levies, refunds, liabilities,...

One of the main advantages of consumption taxation that its advocates, including me, have claimed is simplification. However, the extent to which simplification actually would result from a major consumption-based tax reform would depend not only on the compliance and administrative issues...