Will Social Welfare Expenditures Survive Tax Competition?
Abstract
Increasing economic openness creates demands for social welfare programmes designed to cushion the impact of economic changes, but may also encourage governments to reduce tax rates to attract mobile economic resources. Competitive tax reductions could then prevent governments from being able to finance significant welfare spending. Alternatively, economic globalization might improve the ability of governments to afford social welfare programmes--and several considerations point in this direction. First, taxes on internationally mobile activity represent only small fractions of total revenue collections; personal income taxes, value-added taxes, and social insurance contributions finance most social welfare spending. Second, international competition need not reduce taxes, and indeed, over the past 25 years, corporate tax collections have remained high as fractions of GDP and total taxes. Third, the vitality of a country's economy largely determines its level of social spending. To the extent that incomes rise as a result, greater economic openness should strengthen provision of social welfare. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Oxford University Press in its journal Oxford Review of Economic Policy.
Volume (Year): 22 (2006)
Issue (Month): 3 (Autumn)
Pages: 330-348
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Web page: http://oxrep.oupjournals.org/
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Dhammika Dharmapala, 2008.
"What Problems and Opportunities are Created by Tax Havens?,"
Working Papers
0820, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
- Dhammika Dharmapala, 2008. "What problems and opportunities are created by tax havens?," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(4), pages 661-679, winter.
- Giuseppe Carone & Jan Host Schmidt & Gaetan Nicodeme, 2007.
"Tax revenues in the European Union: Recent trends and challenges ahead,"
European Economy - Economic Papers
280, Directorate General Economic and Monetary Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
- Carone, Giuseppe & Nicodème, Gaëtan & Schmidt, Jan, 2007. "Tax revenues in the European Union: Recent trends and challenges ahead," MPRA Paper 3996, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Dhammika Dharmapala & James R. Hines Jr., 2006.
"Which Countries Become Tax Havens?,"
NBER Working Papers
12802, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Dharmapala, Dhammika & Hines Jr., James R., 2009. "Which countries become tax havens?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(9-10), pages 1058-1068, October.
- Troeger, Vera & Plumper, Thomas, 2012. "Tax Competition and Income Inequality: Why did the Welfare State Survive?," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 82, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
- Marcin Piatkowski & Mariusz Jarmuzek, 2008. "Zero Corporate Income Tax in Moldova: Tax Competition and Its Implications for Eastern Europe," IMF Working Papers 08/203, International Monetary Fund.
- Neumann, Rebecca & Holman, Jill & Alm, James, 2009. "Globalization and tax policy," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 193-211, August.
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