IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cje/issued/v24y1991i1p124-43.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do We Care? A Study of Canada's Indirect Tax System

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Cragg

Abstract

This paper builds on the optimal taxation literature of Diamond and Mirrlees (1971), Ahmad and Stern (1984), and Christiansen and Jansen (1978). Using ethically defensible measures of social welfare, the effective redistribution due to the Canadian indirect tax system is measured and directions of welfare enhancing tax reform are uncovered. Using micro-data from the Family Expenditure Survey, this study finds that, surprisingly, the existing Canadian indirect tax system is neither progressive nor regressive, rather, the implicit government preferences (as reflected in the indirect tax system) show no aversion to cross-class income inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Cragg, 1991. "Do We Care? A Study of Canada's Indirect Tax System," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 24(1), pages 124-143, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cje:issued:v:24:y:1991:i:1:p:124-43
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0008-4085%28199102%2924%3A1%3C124%3ADWCASO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F
    Download Restriction: only available to JSTOR subscribers
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peter Tóth & Andrej Cupák & Marian Rizov, 2021. "Measuring the efficiency of VAT reforms: a demand system simulation approach," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(3), pages 1218-1243.
    2. Alessandro Santoro, 2007. "Marginal Commodity Tax Reforms: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 827-848, September.
    3. Mickael Beaud & Thierry Blayac & Patrice Bougette & Soufiane Khoudmi & Philippe Mahenc & Stéphane Mussard, 2013. "Estimation du coût d'opportunité des fonds publics pour l'économie française," Studies and Syntheses 14-01, LAMETA, Universtiy of Montpellier, revised Oct 2014.
    4. Creedy, John & Li, Shuyun May & Moslehi, Solmaz, 2010. "Inequality Aversion And The Optimal Composition Of Government Expenditure," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(S2), pages 290-306, November.
    5. David Madden, 1995. "An analysis of indirect tax reform in Ireland in the 1980s," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 16(1), pages 18-37, May.
    6. Alemayehu Geda & Abebe Shimeles, 2005. "Taxes and Tax Reform in Ethiopia, 1990-2004," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2005-65, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Urzúa, Carlos M., 2004. "The Ahmad-Stern approach revisited: Variants and an application to Mexico," EGAP Working Papers 2004-05, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Ciudad de México.
    8. Jeni Klugman, 2007. "Ethiopia : Explaining Food Price Inflation," World Bank Publications - Reports 19539, The World Bank Group.
    9. Andrej Cupák & Peter Tóth, 2017. "Measuring the Efficiency of VAT reforms: Evidence from Slovakia," Working and Discussion Papers WP 6/2017, Research Department, National Bank of Slovakia.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cje:issued:v:24:y:1991:i:1:p:124-43. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Prof. Werner Antweiler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.