IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/86283.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A positive theory of tax reform

Author

Listed:
  • Ilzetzki, Ethan

Abstract

The political impediments to reform and the forces allowing its success are studied in a model where the tax base and statutory rate are separate instruments of tax policy. The model predicts that big bang reforms—large changes in the tax code–may be easier to enact than marginal reforms. Preferences over the tax base face a tipping point where even the beneficiaries from tax exemptions support reform. At such a “reform moment”, tax reform is Pareto improving. Politically feasible tax reform occurs when fiscal needs are large, but may nonetheless involve reductions in marginal tax rates. There is strategic complementary in lobbying for tax exemptions, resulting in multiple equilibria. Evidence from tax-base changes in a panel of OECD countries supports a number of the main predictions.

Suggested Citation

  • Ilzetzki, Ethan, 2015. "A positive theory of tax reform," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86283, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:86283
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/86283/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Slemrod, Joel & Kopczuk, Wojciech, 2002. "The optimal elasticity of taxable income," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 91-112, April.
    2. Congressional Budget Office, 2013. "The Distribution of Major Tax Expenditures in the Individual Income Tax System," Reports 43768, Congressional Budget Office.
    3. M. Dewatripont & G. Roland, 1992. "Economic Reform and Dynamic Political Constraints," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(4), pages 703-730.
    4. Laura Kawano & Joel Slemrod, 2012. "The Effect of Tax Rates and Tax Bases on Corporate Tax Revenues: Estimates with New Measures of the Corporate Tax Base," Working Papers 1219, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
    5. Congressional Budget Office, 2013. "The Distribution of Major Tax Expenditures in the Individual Income Tax System," Reports 43768, Congressional Budget Office.
    6. Alesina, Alberto & Drazen, Allan, 1991. "Why Are Stabilizations Delayed?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1170-1188, December.
    7. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2002. "Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262661314, April.
    8. Feldstein, Martin, 1976. "On the theory of tax reform," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1-2), pages 77-104.
    9. Micael Castanheira & Gaëtan Nicodème & Paola Profeta, 2012. "On the political economics of tax reforms: survey and empirical assessment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(4), pages 598-624, August.
    10. Mikhail Golosov & Aleh Tsyvinski & Nicolas Werquin, 2014. "A Variational Approach to the Analysis of Tax Systems," NBER Working Papers 20780, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Auerbach, Alan J., 1985. "The theory of excess burden and optimal taxation," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 61-127, Elsevier.
    12. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2013. "Misallocation and productivity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(1), pages 1-10, January.
    13. Sanjay Jain & Sharun W. Mukand, 2003. "Redistributive Promises and the Adoption of Economic Reform," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 256-264, March.
    14. Congressional Budget Office, 2013. "The Distribution of Major Tax Expenditures in the Individual Income Tax System," Reports 43768, Congressional Budget Office.
    15. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    16. Besley, Timothy & Coate, Stephen, 1998. "Sources of Inefficiency in a Representative Democracy: A Dynamic Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 139-156, March.
    17. Wilson, John Douglas, 1989. "On the Optimal Tax Base for Commodity Taxation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(5), pages 1196-1206, December.
    18. Congressional Budget Office, 2013. "The Distribution of Major Tax Expenditures in the Individual Income Tax System," Reports 43768, Congressional Budget Office.
    19. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 2002. "Special Interest Politics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262571676, April.
    20. James A. Robinson & Daron Acemoglu, 2000. "Political Losers as a Barrier to Economic Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 126-130, May.
    21. Fernandez, Raquel & Rodrik, Dani, 1991. "Resistance to Reform: Status Quo Bias in the Presence of Individual-Specific Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1146-1155, December.
    22. Micael Castanheira & Gaëtan Nicodème & Paola Profeta, 2012. "On the political economics of tax reforms: survey and empirical assessment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(4), pages 598-624, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Felix J. Bierbrauer & Pierre C. Boyer & Andreas Peichl, 2021. "Politically Feasible Reforms of Nonlinear Tax Systems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(1), pages 153-191, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ilzetzki, Ethan, 2018. "Tax reform and the political economy of the tax base," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 197-210.
    2. Micael Castanheira & Gaëtan Nicodème & Paola Profeta, 2012. "On the political economics of tax reforms: survey and empirical assessment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(4), pages 598-624, August.
    3. Jain, Sanjay & Majumdar, Sumon, 2016. "State capacity, redistributive compensation and the political economy of economic policy reform," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 462-473.
    4. Marcus Berliant & Pierre C. Boyer, 2024. "Politics and income taxes: Progress and progressivity," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 26(4), August.
    5. Prato, Carlo & Wolton, Stephane, 2018. "Rational ignorance, populism, and reform," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 119-135.
    6. Jain, Sanjay & Majumdar, Sumon & Mukand, Sharun W, 2014. "Walk the line: Conflict, state capacity and the political dynamics of reform," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 150-166.
    7. Heather Congdon Fors, 2016. "Citizens' support for Economic Reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 84(3), pages 343-363, September.
    8. Steven J. Davis, 2015. "Regulatory Complexity and Policy Uncertainty: Headwinds of Our Own Making," Economics Working Papers 15118, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
    9. Micael Castanheira & Gaëtan Nicodème & Paola Profeta, 2012. "On the political economics of tax reforms: survey and empirical assessment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(4), pages 598-624, August.
    10. Eduardo Wiesner, 2008. "The Political Economy of Macroeconomic Policy Reform in Latin America," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12913.
    11. Koehne, Sebastian & Sachs, Dominik, 2022. "Pareto-improving reforms of tax deductions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    12. Ahiteme N. Houndonougbo & Matthew N. Murray, 2019. "Millionaires or Job Creators: What Really Happens to Employment Growth When You Stick It to the Rich?," Public Finance Review, , vol. 47(1), pages 112-141, January.
    13. Bernecker, Andreas, 2016. "Divided we reform? Evidence from US welfare policies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 24-38.
    14. Johannes Lindvall, 2010. "Power Sharing and Reform Capacity," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 22(3), pages 359-376, July.
    15. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2015. "Inequality in America," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 657(1), pages 8-20, January.
    16. Severin Borenstein & Lucas W. Davis, 2016. "The Distributional Effects of US Clean Energy Tax Credits," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 191-234.
    17. Prato, Carlo & Wolton, Stephane, 2013. "Rational Ignorance, Elections, and Reform," MPRA Paper 68638, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Dec 2015.
    18. Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, 2015. "The True Levels of Government and Social Expenditures in Advanced Economies," Policy Briefs PB15-4, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    19. Bowen, T. Renee & Anesi, Vincent, 2018. "Policy Experimentation, Redistribution and Voting Rules," CEPR Discussion Papers 12797, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Dalibor S. Eterovic, 2011. "Institutional Bias towards the Status Quo," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 167(3), pages 489-514, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance

    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:ehl:lserod:86283. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.