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Capturing Economic Rents from Resources through Royalties and Taxes

Author

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  • Duanjie Chen

    (The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary)

  • Jack Mintz

    (The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary)

Abstract

Oil price fluctuations, concerns over the division of resource revenues, and unconventional oil and gas developments are forcing governments to confront the same issue: how to design optimal royalty and corporate tax systems that bring in a publicly acceptable share of revenues without discouraging private investment. This paper surveys tax and royalty systems across six countries, as well as four US states and five Canadian provinces, offering concise analyses of their strengths and shortcomings to describe the best and simplest approaches to both. As in a public-private partnership, government owns the resources and allows private agents to maximize the rents resources generate. An optimal royalty system will thus be rent-based, ensuring that both owner and agent obtain maximally competitive returns so that each has incentives to continue the partnership. Such a system will also be simple, making compliance easy, manipulation difficult, and risks affordable. And it will be stable, instilling in the private sector the confidence needed to invest for the long term. As for corporate income taxes, they should be neutral across business activities, and applied at equal effective rates on economic income, to avoid distorting market forces through subsidies or needless complexity. A clean rent-based tax that allows all costs incurred by producers to be expensed or carried over, along with a corporate income tax system shorn of many of the preferences that negatively affect business activity, should be the way forward for any government looking to update their fiscal regimes for the 21st century.

Suggested Citation

  • Duanjie Chen & Jack Mintz, 2012. "Capturing Economic Rents from Resources through Royalties and Taxes," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 5(30), October.
  • Handle: RePEc:clh:resear:v:5:y:2012:i:30
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Charles E. McLure Jr. & Jack Mintz & George R. Zodrow, 2019. "US Supreme Court Unanimously Chooses Substance over Form in Foreign Tax Credit Case: Implications of the PPL Decision for the Creditability of Cash-flow Taxes," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: George R Zodrow (ed.), TAXATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Selected Essays of George R. Zodrow, chapter 7, pages 195-225, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Duanjie Chen & Guillermo Perry, 2010. "Mining Taxation in Colombia," Documentos CEDE 12562, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    3. Charles E McLure & Jack Mintz & George R. Zodrow, 2014. "US Supreme Court Unanimously Chooses Substance over Form in Foreign Tax Credit," Working Papers 1411, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
    4. Robin Boadway & Michael Keen, 2014. "Rent Taxes and Royalties in Designing Fiscal Regimes for Non-Renewable Resources," CESifo Working Paper Series 4568, CESifo.
    5. Bev Dahlby & Kevin Milligan, 2017. "From theory to practice: Canadian economists contributions to public finance," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1324-1347, December.
    6. Fuss, Sabine & Chen, Claudine & Jakob, Michael & Marxen, Annika & Rao, Narasimha D. & Edenhofer, Ottmar, 2016. "Could resource rents finance universal access to infrastructure? A first exploration of needs and rents," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(6), pages 691-712, December.
    7. Ey, 2015. "Experiences with cash-flow taxation and prospects. Final report," Taxation Papers 55, Directorate General Taxation and Customs Union, European Commission.
    8. BĂLĂŞESCU, Răzvan, 2014. "Natural Resource Taxation From The Sustainable Economic Perspective," Journal of Financial and Monetary Economics, Centre of Financial and Monetary Research "Victor Slavescu", vol. 1(1), pages 223-227.
    9. Radek Stefanski & Gerhard Toews, 2018. "What’s in a wedge? Misallocation and Taxation in the Oil Industry," 2018 Meeting Papers 272, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    10. Vining, Aidan R. & Moore, Mark A., 2017. "Potash ownership and extraction: Between a rock and a hard place in Saskatchewan," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 71-80.
    11. Smith, James L., 2014. "A parsimonious model of tax avoidance and distortions in petroleum exploration and development," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 140-157.
    12. Jack Mintz, 2022. "A Proposal for a "Big Bang" Corporate Tax Reform," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 15(7), February.
    13. Lund, Diderik, 2018. "Increasing resource rent taxation when the corporate income tax is reduced?," Memorandum 3/2018, Oslo University, Department of Economics.

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