Tax Systems
Joel Slemrod and Christian Gillitzer
Abstract
Despite its theoretical elegance and the substantial insights it has provided, the standard optimal tax model has significant limitations. This book argues that tax analysis must move beyond the emphasis on tax rates and bases to consider such aspects of taxation as administration, compliance, and remittance. This new tax-systems approach revisits the issue of remittance (who or what entity writes the check to cover tax liability); incorporates administrative and compliance costs; recognized a wide range of behavioral responses to tax rates; considers non-standard instruments such as who or wh ... More
Despite its theoretical elegance and the substantial insights it has provided, the standard optimal tax model has significant limitations. This book argues that tax analysis must move beyond the emphasis on tax rates and bases to consider such aspects of taxation as administration, compliance, and remittance. This new tax-systems approach revisits the issue of remittance (who or what entity writes the check to cover tax liability); incorporates administrative and compliance costs; recognized a wide range of behavioral responses to tax rates; considers non-standard instruments such as who or what entity should remit taxes (employer or employee, retailer or consumer); incorporates administrative and compliance costs; recognizes a range of behavioral responses to taxation, including evasion and avoidance; considers non-standard policy instruments such as public disclosure of tax liability and tax enforcement strategies. These issues are taken up formally using the standard analytical tools of public economics, and illustrated with examples from tax policy issues around the world. The challenges for the empirical analysis of tax systems are considered and new approaches are proposed. Promising directions for future research are laid out.
Keywords:
Taxation,
Tax systems,
Tax evasion,
Tax avoidance,
Tax remittance
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780262026727 |
| Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: May 2014 |
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262026727.001.0001 |
