An important question is whether VAT exemption of financial services is a desirable property or whether it is justified only due to practical and administrative necessity. This paper singles out a number of financial services for discussion of this issue in a context allowing for other taxes and...

In West Africa, the Value Added Tax (VAT) policy consists of a uniform tax rate, but several items consumed by rich and poor households, are exempted. We provide an optimal tax framework to reflect on the welfare effects of such a tariff structure, in the context of current debates on domestic...

We construct a general equilibrium trade model of a two-class small open host or source country. When consumption tax revenue finances the provision of a public good, marginal migration reduces social welfare in the source country and raises it in the host. When consumption tax revenue is...

This paper identifies conditions under which, starting from any tax distorting equilibrium, destination- and origin-based indirect tax-harmonizing reforms are potentially Pareto improving in the presence of global public goods. The first condition (unrequited transfers between governments)...

This paper studies the design of indirect redistributive taxation and of corrective taxation, as well as the formation of equilibrium indirect tax policies via a political process, in the presence of status goods, allowing for the possibility that illegal copies of those goods may be purchased...

Atkinson and Stiglitz show that with weakly separability, differential commodity taxes are unnecessary given an optimal nonlinear income tax. Deaton showed that with an optimal linear progressive income tax, commodity taxes are superfluous under weakly separable and linear Engel curves. Using...

The paper assesses the distributional and efficiency/disincentive aspects of the Greek indirect tax system, which provides 60% of total tax revenue. The marginal welfare costs of broad commodity groups were computed to identify welfare-improving directions of reform. The disincentive effects...

The paper shows that the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) does not depend on whether public revenue is collected by taxation of consumer goods or income from factors supplied by households on the market. Atkinson and Stern (1974) concluded in their seminal paper that “[...] whether the...