The burden of small business acting as an 'unpaid tax collector', particularly for the Goods and Services Tax (GST), is currently subject to much political debate in Australia. However, realistic proposals as how best to alleviate this burden are few and far between. This article reviews...

Most research on tax evasion has focused on the income tax. Sales tax evasion has been largely ignored and dismissed as immaterial. This paper explored the differences between income tax and sales tax evasion and demonstrated that sales tax enforcement is deserving of and requires the use of...

[Extract] That all taxpayers have the right in Australia to lodge a return is a privilege. However, many find it a heavy burden and favour simplification. Professional bodies and individuals have proposed alternatives that allow for tax withheld at source to be a final tax, eliminating the need...

In this paper we use a general equilibrium model of Vietnam, calibrated to 1995 data, to analyze tax reform options for Vietnam. We focus on aggregate welfare impacts as well as welfare of household groups ranked by income. The main focus is on indirect tax reform (VAT), but we also examine...

In U.S. federal income tax, the standard deduction, along with the personal exemptions, provides taxpayers with a minimum amount of untaxed income, effectively creating a "zero bracket amount." For historical and political reasons, however, the standard deduction also operates as a simplified...

This paper explores the interaction between the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the cost-of-living faced by single mothers. After the 1993 EITC expansion, we identify up to a 10 percentage point increase in labor force participation for single mothers in the lowest cost areas but no...

This paper generalizes the standard model of how taxes affect the labor-leisure choice by allowing individuals to change both their labor supply and avoidance effort in response to tax changes. Doing so reveals that the income and substitution effect of taxes depend on both preferences and the...

Many experts equate the best tax system with the simplest, and the best tax reform with the one that most simplifies the system. However, the simplest, most elegant policy need not be the best because tax policy involves a tradeoff among objectives, including equity and efficiency objectives,...

The President?s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform took on a very difficult task?to disentangle the complexities, sources of unfairness and economic distortions in current tax policy, and provide proposals for reform?and its final report is admirable in its intent and accomplishment (President?s...

This article discusses probably the most significant obstacle to the adoption of a consumption tax: the negative effects on existing wealth that the transition from the income tax to most forms of a consumption tax would have. The Congressional Budget Office in its 1997 study posed the question,...