This book by Alan Viard and Robert Carroll proposes to completely replace the income tax system with a progressive consumption tax.

One of the main rationales for taxing consumption rather than income is that it is believed that consumption taxes discourage consumption, encourage savings, and thus generate higher economic growth. However, empirical evidence on the actual effectiveness of consumption taxes in stimulating...

During the 2010-2019 decade, consumption taxes have risen in the vast majority of the EU Member States as a result of austerity measures, tax shifts as well as taxing transport and housing-related energy consumption. The redistributive impact of these policy changes remains mostly unexplored. In...

It is well known that consumption-tax systems have several advantages over existing income-tax systems, such as greater administrative simplicity and intertemporal neutrality. Despite these advantages, proposals to introduce consumption taxes have only had very limited success. This paper...

This paper examines the effects of consumption taxation on longrun growth in an infinity-lived representative agent model of endogenous growth in which the desire for social status induces private agents to care about others’ wealth or consumption levels. We also allow for nonseparable...

Reformed taxation of capital gains could play an important role in a broader policy package to improve the simplicity, equity, and efficiency of the federal tax system. Constructive reforms for the United States would draw on Canadian provisions for taxing capital gains: a) eliminate the...