While offering tax incentives to attract foreign direct investment has become a global phenomenon and part of economic globalization in the 1990s, it also is political and controversial. But the political determinants of tax incentive policies have rarely been analyzed. This article fills this gap by making two contributions. First, I offer a theory that explains how political regime type influ...

We identify factors that led a regional government (Quebec, Canada) to opt for a reduction of its tobacco tax to combat tobacco smuggling. Then we explore the fallout of Quebec's tobacco-tax rollback on its tobacco control policy. We conducted qualitative research using a case-study design and multiple sources of data. We applied the Advocacy Coalition Framework in respect of data collection an...

Previous analyses of fat taxes have generally worked within an empirical framework in which it is difficult to determine whether consumers benefit from the policy. This note outlines on simple means to determine whether consumers benefit from a fat tax by comparing the ratio of expenditures on the taxed good to the weight effect of the tax against the indivi­ dual’s willingness to pay for a one...

All opinions expressed here are those of the authors and not those of the Economics Education and Research Consortium Research dissemination by the EERC may include views on policy, but the EERC itself takes no institutional policy positions This paper considers the problem of determining the optimal taxation for a group of individuals with random, independent and identically distributed income...

There is importance and timeliness in the issue of Internet taxation. Internet commerce is growing exponentially. With this growth comes the potential for tremendous tax revenue, as well as criticism for receiving an unfair tax advantage. One of the benefits of the Internet is its lack of national and geographical boundaries. However, this lack of boundaries makes taxation and regulation of the...

Previous analyses of fat taxes have generally worked within an empirical framework in which it is difficult to determine whether consumers benefit from the policy. This note outlines on simple means to determine whether consumers benefit from a fat tax by comparing the ratio of expenditures on the taxed good to the weight effect of the tax against the individual's willingness to pay for a one-p...

Taxation as a potent fiscal policy instrument through which infrastructures and social services that drive the development process of any society has been ineffective in Nigeria. The adoption of appropriate measures is, however, a requirement for the generation of adequate tax revenue. This study set out to investigates efficiency and effectiveness in the administration of tax in Nigeria, using...

This paper develops a general approach to characterizing optimal income tax enforce­ ment. Our analysis clarifies the nature of the interplay between tax rates, audit prob­ abilities, and penalties for misreporting. In particular, it is shown that for a variety of objective functions for the principal the optimal tax schedule is in general concave (at least weakly) and monotonic; the marginal t...

In this study, we use the Health and Retirement Study to test whether older adult smokers, defined as those 50 years and older, respond to cigarette tax increases. Our preferred specifications show that older adult smokers respond modestly to tax increases: a $1.00 (131.6%) tax increase leads to a 3.8-5.2% reduction in cigarettes smoked per day (implied tax elasticity = -0.03 to -0.04). We iden...