HOW BIG A ROLE THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD play in the economy is always a central issue in political debates. But measuring the size of government is not simple. People often use shorthand measures, such as the ratio of spending to gross domestic product (GDP) or of tax revenues to GDP. But those measures leave out important aspects of government action. For example, they do not capture the ways gov...

OBJECTIVE Beverage taxes came into light with increasing concerns about obesity, particularly among youth. Sugar-sweetened beverages have become a target of anti-obesity initiatives with increasing evidence of their link to obesity. Our paper offers a method for estimating revenues from an excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages that governments of various levels could direct towards obesity pr...

This paper explores the interactions between taxes on work-related traffic congestion and pre-existing distortionary taxes in the labor market. A congestion tax raises the overall costs of commuting to work and discourages labor force participation at the margin, when revenues are returned in lump-sum transfers. We find that the resulting efficiency loss in the labor market can be larger than t...

abstract tax is one of the main sources of financing government budget. therefore, having a clear picture about the attainable amount of taxes are not only necessary for optimal allocation of scarce resources for tax collection, but also helps the government to develop precise tax collection programs .in this article, the structural features of the tax revenues series have first been examined i...

A tax buyout is a contract between tax authorities and a tax payer which reduces the marginal income tax rate in exchange for a lump-sum payment. While previous contributions have focussed on labour supply, we consider the interaction with tax evasion and show that a buyout can increase expected tax revenues. This will be the case if (1) the audit probability is constant and the penalty for eva...

Abstract – Nonprofit organizations earn both tax-exempt and taxable revenues. The taxable portion of nonprofit revenues is nonprofits smallest, yet most quickly growing revenue source. Because nonprofits may have a natural aversion to ancillary activities, taxable ventures need to provide higher returns than alternative investments. This paper examines how nonprofits’ ability to exploit product...

economic times, states often legislate tax increases to create additional revenues, even though standard macroeconomic theory suggests that doing so dampens economic activity. Over the last decade or so, state governments have taken on more responsibility for administering social welfare programs. Thanks to abundant federal aid, a robust national economy, and a decline in the number of particip...

This paper analyzes the interaction between corporate taxes and corporate governance. We show that the characteristics of a taxation system affect the extraction of private benefits by company insiders. A higher tax rate increases the amount of income insiders divert and thus worsens governance outcomes. In contrast, stronger tax enforcement reduces diversion and, in so doing, can raise the sto...