IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/car/carecp/01-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Tax Systems in the World - An Empirical Investigation into the Importance of Tax Bases, Collection Costs, and Political Regime

Author

Abstract

There has been surprisingly little empirical work explaining why countries choose different bundles of taxes. Early research by Musgrave and Hinrichs focused on the amorphous distinction between direct and indirect taxes. More recent research has examined the use of trade taxes and inflation, with little appreciation for the fact that countries are choosing a complete revenue mix. We examine the determinants of tax composition in 100 countries using data averaged over the periods 1975-80, 1981-85, and 1986-92. The dependent variables are tax revenues from the different sources as fractions of total revenue (or of GDP), including personal income taxes, corporate taxes, social security & payroll taxes, domestic goods & services taxes, trade taxes and tax rates, property taxes, and nontax revenues from seigniorage and public enterprises. All tax sources have increasing marginal political costs attached to their use. Consequently, as the scale or size of total revenues increases, reliance on all revenue sources can be expected to increase, though some tax bases may be used more heavily than others. We find strong evidence supporting this scale effect. Our empirical analysis also provides strong support for the prediction that countries tend to rely more heavily on tax sources for which the base is relatively large, and there is evidence that the use of taxes that depend on widespread literacy increases as educational attainment rises. While an explanation of the tax mix that relies on economic variables measuring scale, tax bases, and administration and enforcement costs works reasonably well even in a diverse sample of countries, we find that tax composition also varies with the nature of the political regime. Socialist countries tend to make more use of corporate, sales, and excise tax sources than other regimes, perhaps due to the greater ease with which the activity of businesses can be monitored, a stronger ideological interest in taxing business, or a reduced need to use taxation of individuals to accomplish social goals. We also find that more repressive governments rely less on personal income taxation, possibly because this tax source requires a higher degree of voluntary compliance than other forms of taxation. At a general level, the results as a whole are of interest for at least two reasons. First, they add to the set of stylized facts that may serve as a basis for further theoretical work that can unify the experience of different countries around the world. Secondly, the ability to model the tax mix of a diverse sample of countries raises interesting questions about the possibilities for tax reform. To the extent that international differences in the mix of taxes are predictable, proposals for reform that do not take the underlying forces into account are likely to be unsuccessful, or may be very costly if they do succeed in altering the existing equilibrium.

Suggested Citation

  • Lawrence W. Kenny & Stanley L. Winer, 2001. "Tax Systems in the World - An Empirical Investigation into the Importance of Tax Bases, Collection Costs, and Political Regime," Carleton Economic Papers 01-03, Carleton University, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:car:carecp:01-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.carleton.ca/economics/wp-content/uploads/cep01-03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. George Tridimas & Stanley L. Winer, 2004. "A Contribution to the Political Economy of Government Size: 'Demand', 'Supply' and 'Political Influence'," Carleton Economic Papers 04-04, Carleton University, Department of Economics.
    2. Horacio L. P. Piffano, 2007. "Argentina and Brazil: Fiscal Harmonization and Subnational Sales Taxation – State / Provincial VAT versus State / Provincial Retail Sales Tax," IIE, Working Papers 069, IIE, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    3. Isidro Hernandez Rodríguez, 2011. "Tributación y desarrollo en perspectiva," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 13(24), pages 271-302, January-J.
    4. Isidro Hernández Rodríguez, 2015. "Economía política de la tributación en Colombia," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Economía, edition 1, number 70, August.
    5. Tosun Mehmet S, 2005. "The Tax Structure and Trade Liberalization of the Middle East and North Africa Region," Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 20-37, April.
    6. Abel Escribà-Folch, 2009. "Do authoritarian institutions mobilize economic cooperation?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 71-93, March.
    7. Tridimas, George & Winer, Stanley L., 2005. "The political economy of government size," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 643-666, September.
    8. Mahdavi, Saeid, 2008. "The level and composition of tax revenue in developing countries: Evidence from unbalanced panel data," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 607-617, October.
    9. Josh Ederington & Jenny Minier, 2008. "Reconsidering the empirical evidence on the Grossman-Helpman model of endogenous protection," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 41(2), pages 501-516, May.
    10. Stanley L. Winer & Walter Hettich, 2002. "The Political Economy of Taxation: Positive and Normative Analysis when Collective Choice Matters," Carleton Economic Papers 02-11, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 2004.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    political economy of taxation; tax mix; tax bases; administration costs; political regime;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • H27 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Other Sources of Revenue

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:car:carecp:01-03. 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: Court Lindsay (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.