John Freebairn () (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne)
Abstract
The revenue, efficiency, equity and operating costs properties of alternative tax bases or taxable sums are compared and contrasted. Initially the assessment is made for generic, comprehensive tax bases on income and consumption flows, wealth stocks, and on transactions. On the criteria of efficiency and equity, there are unresolved conceptual and empirical arguments in choosing between income, consumption and wealth tax bases, but general revenue raising transaction taxes are inferior. In practice, including in current Australia, the different tax bases are far from comprehensive because of the many exemptions and deductions. On all good tax design criteria, the case is made to broaden the tax bases for income, the GST, payroll and land taxes; special purpose transaction taxes to counter market failures should be redesigned; and conveyance duties and other stamp duties should be removed.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne in its series Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series with number
wp2005n11.
Length: 19 pages Date of creation: Aug 2005 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2005n11
Contact details of provider: Postal: Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010 Australia Phone: +61 3 8344 2100 Fax: +61 3 8344 2111 Email: Web page: http://www.melbourneinstitute.com/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Woei T Liew).
Related research
Keywords:
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: