National Tax Journal articles from December 1994

National Tax Journal archives from December 1994

Differential burdens from the assessment provisions of Proposition 13. (California)
December 1, 1994... INTRODUCTION This paper estimates the differences in tax burdens for homeowners that result from a key aspect of California's Proposition 13: the limitation on increases in assessed value to a maximum of two percent per year. These...

Is a value added tax regressive? Annual versus lifetime incidence measures.
December 1, 1994... INTRODUCTION Despite its widespread use in Europe and other parts of the world, a national value added tax (VAT) has never been adopted in the United States. One concern expressed by many policymakers is the believed incidence of a VAT....

State tax structure and multiple policy objectives.
December 1, 1994... INTRODUCTION The goals of tax policy are typically to provide a fair, efficient, and predictable means of financing government expenditure. To achieve these multiple objectives, policymakers choose a mix of taxes. Separately, each tax...

Substituting direct government lending for guaranteed student loans: how budget rules distorted economic decisionmaking.
December 1, 1994... The theory and practice of modern public finance is based upon market failure. Politicians' budgetary and policy choices often are guided, however, by the simplicities of budget scorekeeping rules rather than by theories of market failure. The...

Taxation and risk taking: a general equilibrium perspective.
December 1, 1994... INTRODUCTION Modern study of taxation and risk taking commenced with Domar and Musgrave (1944). They examined how investors would allocate their portfolios between safe and risky assets (e.g., between cash and stock) in the presence of...

Is local government revenue response to federal aid symmetrical? Evidence from Pennsylvania county governments in an era of retrenchment.
December 1, 1994... INTRODUCTION Local governments in the United States have faced increasing fiscal pressure in recent years because of a substantial reduction in federal aid. Federal aid receipts peaked in 1978 after steady growth throughout the 1960s...

The influence of ethical attitudes on taxpayer compliance.
December 1, 1994... The United States uses a self-assessed taxing system that relies on voluntary compliance by taxpayers. Although most taxpayers still voluntarily comply with the tax laws, intentional noncompliance is a serious and pervasive problem. It has been...

The decomposition of coefficients in censored regression models: understanding the effect of independent variables on taxpayer behavior.
December 1, 1994... INTRODUCTION A considerable amount of empirical tax research uses censored regression models to examine the behavior of individuals and institutions. A review of recent research shows censored regressions modeling taxpayer behavior as...

Jobs, productivity, and local economic development: what implications does economic research have for the role of government? (Symposium on State and Local Development Policy)
December 1, 1994... INTRODUCTION State and local "economic development programs"--programs that assist individual businesses with tax or financial subsidies, or special public services, in order to increase local jobs or improve local businesses'...

How would you know a good economic development policy if you tripped over one? Hint: don't just count jobs. (Symposium on State and Local Development Policy)
December 1, 1994... INTRODUCTION There is an enormous amount of literature on the effectiveness of state and local economic development policies. Most of the empirical literature by economists [very nicely summarized by Bartik, a major contributor (1991)]...

Taxation and Democracy: Swedish, British and American Approaches to Financing the Modern State.
December 1, 1994... WHAT SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN A STUDY OF TAXATION? Most explanations for the evolution of tax systems acknowledge the importance of two factors: economic structure, and the relative strength of various interest groups. Over the last decade...

Successful Tax Reform: Lessons from an Analysis of Tax Reform in Six Countries.
December 1, 1994... I write this review as a political scientist, which is not an admission of pride or guilt, but simply a relevant fact. For at least the last three decades, the largest number of political science Ph.D.s have been conferred in comparative...

Taxation, Poverty and Income Distribution.
December 1, 1994... Analytical studies of inequality have come a long way. During the 1950s and 1960s, the economics profession generally viewed inequality as a normative issue about which the profession had little to say. The problems in making valid...