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Taxing Intermediate Goods to Compensate for Distorting Taxes on Household Consumption

Author

Listed:
  • Bohlin, Lars

    (Department of Business, Economics, Statistics and Informatics)

Abstract

In contrast to the classic result in Diamond and Mirrlees (1971) that fiscal taxes should not be levied on intermediate use of goods, Newbury (1985) showed that, in a closed economy with Leontief technology, input taxes should be used to indirectly tax commodities that for some reason are untaxed in final consumption. This paper extends the Newbury result to more general cases; i.e., to open economies with substitution possibilities in the production functions. Moreover, it shows that the welfare maximizing proportion between the tax rate for intermediate use by firms and final demand by households declines with higher elasticities of substitution in production functions and with higher price elasticities in import demand functions and export supply functions. It also shows that the welfare maximizing proportion of tax rates between households and firms for one commodity will depend upon the corresponding proportion of tax rates for important substitutes for that commodity. These results are shown both in stylized Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models and in an applied CGE model of the Swedish economy where the tax on electricity is used as an example.

Suggested Citation

  • Bohlin, Lars, 2010. "Taxing Intermediate Goods to Compensate for Distorting Taxes on Household Consumption," Working Papers 2010:5, Örebro University, School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:oruesi:2010_005
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    File URL: https://www.oru.se/globalassets/oru-sv/institutioner/hh/workingpapers/workingpapers2010/wp-5-2010.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Feldstein, Martin S., 1972. "The pricing of public intermediate goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 45-72, April.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Optimal taxation; CGE-analysis;

    JEL classification:

    • D58 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation

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