National Tax Journal articles from September 1993

National Tax Journal archives from September 1993

Infrastructure spending: where do we go from here? (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... INADEQUATE INVESTMENT The origins of the infrastructure "crisis" can be traced on the precipitous decline in public investment spending after 1968. As can be seen in Figures 1 and 2, state and local government public investment rose...

What can private investment incentives accomplish? The case of the investment tax credit. (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... CREDITS FOR COUNTERCYCLICAL PURPOSES On many occasions when the credit has been introduced or revised, smoothing out the business cycle has been one of the reasons. A permanent investment credit is not, however, consistent with this...

How should we measure distribution? (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... WHY WASHINGTON REJECTS THE LIFETIME APPROACH The Political Incorrectness of the Lifetime Approach Politicians reject the lifetime approach. They reject the lifetime approach both because they do not understand it and because it does...

What does the public believe about tax fairness? (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... Tax fairness is a normative concept. Economists have spent decades in search of the elusive social welfare function. Tax policy specialists ponder the proper manner in which to present tables about tax burdens. And politicians try to...

Guidelines for taxing international capital flows: an economic perspective. (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... BASIC QUESTIONS There are three basic questions that one must answer when designing a system to tax international investment income. First, one needs to determine what will be taxed. Options include taxing worldwide income, taxing...

Guidelines for taxing international capital flows: the legal perspective. (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... STATEMENT OF THE GUIDELINES Guideline 1: Worldwide taxation. To promote the traditional fairness goals of an income tax, the citizens and residents of a county should be taxable currently on their worldwide income, including their...

Savers' tax relief: revisiting a good idea. (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... MOTIVATION FOR AN ALTERNATIVE SYSTEM The specter of weak economic growth and income gains for years to come due to low national saving and investment rates is motivating policymakers in both political camps to reconsider tough options....

What is the distributional burden of taxing consumption? (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... There are several variants of consumption tax systems in use around the world and being discussed in the United States.(3) This paper focuses on a proposal to allow the deduction of new net saving from gross income to arrive at taxable income....

Economic, administrative, and political factors in choosing a general consumption tax. (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... The United States may be as close as ever to adopting a national tax on consumption. The Clinton administration's recent "trial balloon" about using a value-added tax (VAT) to finance health care reform is the most tangible evidence of this...

Transitional issues in moving to a direct consumption tax. (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... The implementation of a direct tax on consumption (rather than an indirect tax such as a national sales tax or a VAT) is often viewed as involving particularly difficult transitional problems. Indeed, during the debate prior to passage of the...

State provider assessments to fund Medicaid. (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... BACKGROUND Beginning in the late 1980s, states began making increasing use of an obscure 1985 revision of the federal Medicaid regulations that allowed "donations" by hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers to be used as part of...

The state solution to the federal government's international transfer pricing problem. (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... In recent years, the transfer pricing problem has received increasing, but overdue, attention. The Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Representative J.J. Pickle, held hearings on this issue in 1990 and...

Federal tax policy and the states: corporate integration. (Symposium: New Directions in Tax Policy)
September 1, 1993... CORPORATE INTEGRATION On on federal tax policy issue has there been more discussion and less action than corporate integration. What is rarely noted is that the various integration proposals would have dramatic and varying impacts on...