The idea that marginal tax rates and tax revenue may be inversely related is at least as old as Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. The emergence of the "Laffer Curve" in the modern public debate on the subject has rekindled interestin this idea. The present paper uses data from the 1982 tax rate...

The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 mandated the most substantial reduction in personal income tax rates since the tax cuts of 1964. The rate reductions stimulated debates about the responsiveness of taxpayers to tax rates and incentives, the magnitude of the foregone revenue, and the...

The recent proposal for tax reform developed by the Department of the Treasury suggests dramatic changes in the structure of the personal income tax. One likely side effect of the changes will be a significant adverse impact on the level of charitable contributions by individuals.This paper...

Federal tax policy provides a broad array of incentives for energy investment. I review those policies and construct estimates of marginal effective tax rates for different energy capital investments as of 2007. Effective tax rates vary widely across investment classes. I then consider...

The U.S. Congress is considering a set of bills designed to limit the nation's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper complements the analysis by Paltsev et al. (2007) of cap-and-trade bills and applies the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model to carry out an analysis of...

Tax expenditures are a major source of support for energy related activities in the federal budget exceeding direct budget support for energy by a factor of nearly six. Focusing on the policy goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and petroleum consumption, I find these tax expenditures...

On Aug. 8, 2005, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (PL 109-58). This was the first major piece of energy legislation enacted since 1992 following five years of Congressional efforts to pass energy legislation. Among other things, the law contains tax incentives worth over $14...

In models with irreversible investment, increasing uncertainty about prices has been shown to increase the required rate of return (hurdle rate) and delay investment (e.g., Pindyck, 1988). One serious form of uncertainty faced by firms, a form that policy makers could conceivably control, is tax...

This paper considers ways in which federal tax policy affects municipal asset and debt holdings. The tax treatment of municipal bonds and income creates an arbitrage opportunity for communities to issue tax exempt debt and invest in financial assets. I present evidence that suggests the rules in...