Recent academic research on tax incidence has shifted from an emphasis on static and annual perspectives to examinations of dynamic and lifetime issues. Meanwhile, policy economists are forced to rely on annual data and hence annual analyses. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the nature...

This working paper presents Chapter 7 of a book to be published for the National Bureau of Economic Research by the University of Chicago Press. The point of the book is to compare taxes on income from capital in four countries,accounting for corporate, personal, and property taxes, and...

Each environmental tax in the U.S. is designed to collect revenue for a trust fund used to clean up a particular pollution problem. Each might be intended to collect from a particular industry thought to be responsible for that pollution problem, but none represents a good example of an...

The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 reduced personal marginal tax rates and provided significant business tax breaks. Subsequent changes through 1985 cut back on business allowances. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 reduced marginal rates again, but added significantly to business taxes. Was there...

Alternative corporate tax systems differ in their ability to adapt to changes in the rate of inflation. Absent complete indexing of depreciation allowances, a tax system may use the expected inflation rate to set accelerated depreciation allowances in a way that minimizes the welfare loss from...

Graduated income tax rates and transfer programs create piecewise-linear budget constraints that consist of budget segments and kink points. With any change in these tax rules, each individual may switch between a kink point and a budget segment, between two budget segments, or between two kink...

Although art museums do not pay any substantial taxes, they are greatly affected by various U.S. tax rules. The individual receives a deduction for donations of art to museums, the estate gets a deduction for bequests, and the corporation gets a deduction for charitable gifts. Art museums also...

Mobile sources contribute large percentages of each pollutant, but technology is not yet available to measure and tax emissions from each vehicle. We build a behavioral model of household choices about vehicles and miles traveled. The ideal-but-unavailable emissions tax would encourage drivers...

Recent studies consider public R&D spending that affects abatement knowledge and endogenous growth, distortionary taxes that affect physical and human capital formation, pollution taxes that affect environmental degradation, and regeneration that restores natural capital. Our model combines all...

When tax rates vary by asset, a "hidden" industrial policy may aid industries that invest in a certain mix of assets. In this paper, we examine whether differential use of depreciable assets gives rise to differential tax treatment of high technology industries relative to other industries....