Sales tax is generally not included in the advertised price quoted to consumers in the United States. In contrast, value added taxes (VAT) are embedded into the price in most other countries. This article investigates how the two different pricing structures and consumers' decision-making...

A spate of new research suggests that the salience of a tax dramatically shapes taxpayer behavior: the more salient a tax — i.e., the more prominent a good's after-tax price — the more taxpayers respond. Policymakers make decisions about tax salience, whether they intend to or not, every...

We argue that in order for consumption tax reduction to be effective in increasing consumer wealth rather than benefitting suppliers, the tax field is insufficient by itself. We claim that due to cognitive biases, or heuristics, when the government changes consumption tax rates, officially to...

This paper shows that accounting for variation in mistakes can be crucial for welfare analysis. Focusing on consumer underreaction to not-fully-salient sales taxes, we show theoretically that the efficiency costs of taxation are amplified by differences in underreaction across individuals and...