National Tax Journal articles from June 1998

National Tax Journal archives from June 1998

Taxes and transfers: a new look at the marriage penalty.
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION Economic theory concerning family structure, beginning with Becker (1973, 1974), suggests that economic incentives play a role in family structure decisions. In Becker's model, marital unions occur if the benefits available...

The relationship between state income taxes and local property taxes: education finance in New Jersey.
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION The state of New Jersey has undergone several recent changes in its income tax system. These changes, and the history of the New Jersey income tax, are linked to court decisions that have mandated that the state provide aid...

School finance reform: aid formulas and equity objectives.
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION School finance equity has been a central issue of educational policy for decades. This paper explores the potential of several school aid formulas to satisfy the most widely discussed equity objectives. For the most part, the...

How workers use 401(k) plans: the participation, contribution, and withdrawal decisions.
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION An increasing fraction of the workforce is being offered an employer-sponsored pension plan where the worker makes the critical plan decisions. These decisions include whether to participate, how much to contribute, how to...

The unrelated business income tax, cost allocation, and productive efficiency.
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION Most nonprofit organizations are exempted from federal income taxes by Internal Revenue Code (IRC) [sections] 501. An exception to this general rule is the unrelated business income tax (UBIT) imposed by IRC [sections] 511....

Estimating flat tax incidence and yield: a sensitivity analysis.
June 1, 1998... Few would step forward to defend the existing system of federal individual and corporation income taxes, and few would argue against the need for tax reform. The question is not whether the federal tax system needs changing, but how best to do...

Tax evasion, monopoly, and nonneutral profit taxes.
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION There has been a recent interest in the relationship between the monopolist's tax evasion decision and output decision. The main question concerns whether the decision to evade profit taxes affects the profit-maximizing...

Social Security and private savings.
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION Feldstein (1974) calculated the actuarial present value of Social Security old age pensions (SSW) for each year through 1971. He then estimated a standard life-cycle consumer expenditure function (LCF) augmented by SSW, and...

Tax policy from a public choice perspective.
June 1, 1998... Despite the fact that the tax structure is a product of the political process, rarely does an economic analysis of tax policy take account of the political environment within which the tax structure is designed.(1) The political environment is...

What is missed if we leave out collective choice in the analysis of taxation.
June 1, 1998... INTRODUCTION Omission of collective choice analysis causes us to miss a concept that is fundamental to the understanding of taxation, namely, political equilibrium. Outcomes in the public sector are a consequence of the balancing of...

Public finance and public choice.
June 1, 1998... Most applied tax policy research addresses the efficiency costs of different tax rules, the behavioral effects of taxation, or the distribution of gains and losses associated with a switch from one tax policy to another. There is usually little...

Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform.
June 1, 1998... Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform. Edited by HENRY J. AARON AND WILLIAM G. GALE. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1996. Pp. xvii, 521. INTRODUCTION In 1981, Henry Aaron and Joseph Pechman wrote a book on taxation...

Fiscal Policy: Lessons from Economic Research.
June 1, 1998... Fiscal Policy: Lessons from Economic Research. Edited by ALAN AUERBACH. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997. Pp. 475. Alan Auerbach's volume Fiscal Policy is a superb overview of the state of public economics in the 1990s. There are eight essays...

Sports, Jobs and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums.
June 1, 1998... Sports, Jobs and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums. Edited by ROGER G. NOLL AND ANDREW ZlMBALIST. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1997. Pp. 525. This edited volume, derived from an October 1996 conference,...