The tax-systems perspective considers a variety of costs and behavioral margins often ignored in standard tax analysis: administrative and compliance costs, evasion and avoidance behavior, and multiple nonrate tax-system instruments (for example, withholding and public disclosure). We show how...

"A gripping account of taxation told through lively, dramatic, and sometimes ludicrous stories drawn from around the world and across the ages Governments have always struggled to tax in ways that are effective and tolerably fair. Sometimes they fail grotesquely, as when, in 1898, the British...

Intro -- Contents -- Series Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Part I Introduction and Motivation -- 1 The Need for Tax-System Analysis -- 2 Standard Optimal Tax Models -- Part II Building Blocks of Tax Systems -- 3 Multiple Behavioral Margins -- 4 Multiple Sources of Costs -- 5 Tax Base Elasticity...