Non-compliance of firms with tax regulations is a major constraint on state capacity in developing countries. We focus on an arguably under-appreciated dimension of non-compliance: under-reporting of wages by formal firms to evade payroll taxes. We develop a simple partial-equilibrium model of...

Swedish wives' market earnings contribute 39% of the net family earnings of couples living together. German wives contribute 12%. This paper employs Swedish and German micro data on earnings and personal characteristics of couples. After tax earnings are simulated, under both the tax system of...

In this paper we propose estimates of the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) in 38 African countries. We develop a simple general equilibrium mode inspired by the “1-2-3” model of Devarajan et al. (1994) that can handle taxes on the five major tax classes, takes account of the informal...

This paper proposes a general framework for analysing commodity tax competition under destination and origin principles, based on three possible tax spillovers: the consumer price spillover, the producer price/terms of trade spillover, and rent spillovers. A model is presented which can be...

The feasibility of systemic reforms may depend on their distributional consequences. The shift to a market economy can be expected to increase wage differentials and unemployment, which will have an adverse effect on income distribution. Income tax reform and the change in the system of consumer...

This paper analyses the changes to the tax and social security systems that have occurred since Czechoslovakia's `velvet revolution' in 1989. It shows how the tax system is moving to meet the requirements of a market economy. It suggests that a particularly high priority has to be given to...

The importance of seigniorage relative to other sources of government revenue differs markedly across countries. The main theoretical implication of this paper is that countries with more unstable and polarized political systems rely more heavily on seigniorage. This result is obtained within...

We model international tax competition allowing for agglomeration forces and heterogeneous firms. This provides a new perspective since a tax schedules have different effects on the international relocation decision of small and large firms (large firms are endogenously more sensitive to tax...

The inefficiency of Soviet-type economies results from their monopolized production structure, which makes soft budget constraints almost inevitable, as enterprises have bargaining power and must face expropriative tax rates for macroeconomic stability. Systemic reform aims to improve...

The paper analyses the revenue-raising, distributional and incentive effects of the personal tax system in Hungary from the start of the transitional tax reforms of 1988, and develops methods for estimating marginal indirect taxes. It evaluates the distributional impact of revenue-neutral...