IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc14/100622.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fiscal Equalization, Tax Salience, and Tax Competition

Author

Listed:
  • Altemeyer-Bartscher, Martin

Abstract

This paper analyzes the efficiency consequences of local revenue policies if jurisdictions try to attenuate the pressures of inter-regional competition for mobile factors by substituting attention-grabbing tax instruments that spotlight an additional tax burden with rather inconspicuous ones. We show that the substitution of tax instruments with the view to reduce the perceived tax price may suppress the under-exploitation of tax bases that typically goes along with fiscal equalization.

Suggested Citation

  • Altemeyer-Bartscher, Martin, 2014. "Fiscal Equalization, Tax Salience, and Tax Competition," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100622, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc14:100622
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/100622/1/VfS_2014_pid_938.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sam Bucovetsky & Michael Smart, 2006. "The Efficiency Consequences of Local Revenue Equalization: Tax Competition and Tax Distortions," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 8(1), pages 119-144, January.
    2. Emanuele Bracco & Francesco Porcelli & Michela Redoano, 2013. "Political Competition, Tax Salience and Accountability: Theory and Some Evidence from Italy," CESifo Working Paper Series 4167, CESifo.
    3. Baretti, Christian & Huber, Bernd & Lichtblau, Karl, 2002. "A Tax on Tax Revenue: The Incentive Effects of Equalizing Transfers: Evidence from Germany," Munich Reprints in Economics 20129, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    4. Slemrod, Joel & Blumenthal, Marsha & Christian, Charles, 2001. "Taxpayer response to an increased probability of audit: evidence from a controlled experiment in Minnesota," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(3), pages 455-483, March.
    5. Xavier Gabaix & David Laibson, 2018. "Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets," Chapters, in: Victor J. Tremblay & Elizabeth Schroeder & Carol Horton Tremblay (ed.), Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization, chapter 3, pages 40-74, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Amy Finkelstein, 2009. "E-ztax: Tax Salience and Tax Rates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 969-1010.
    7. Raj Chetty & Adam Looney & Kory Kroft, 2009. "Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1145-1177, September.
    8. Christian Baretti & Bernd Huber & Karl Lichtblau, 2002. "A Tax on Tax Revenue: The Incentive Effects of Equalizing Transfers: Evidence from Germany," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 9(6), pages 631-649, November.
    9. Michael Smart, 1998. "Taxation and Deadweight Loss in a System of Intergovernmental Transfers," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 31(1), pages 189-206, February.
    10. George R. Zodrow & Peter Mieszkowski, 2019. "Pigou, Tiebout, Property Taxation, and the Underprovision of Local Public Goods," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: George R Zodrow (ed.), TAXATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Selected Essays of George R. Zodrow, chapter 17, pages 525-542, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    11. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1974. "Income tax evasion: A theoretical analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 201-202, May.
    12. Cremer, Helmuth & Gahvari, Firouz, 2000. "Tax evasion, fiscal competition and economic integration," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(9), pages 1633-1657, October.
    13. James E. Alt & David Dreyer Lassen, 2003. "Fiscal Transparency and Fiscal Policy Outcomes in OECD Countries," EPRU Working Paper Series 03-02, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    14. Wilson, John D., 1986. "A theory of interregional tax competition," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 296-315, May.
    15. Sven Stö & Christian Traxler, 2005. "Tax Evasion and Auditing in a Federal Economy," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 12(4), pages 515-531, August.
    16. Allingham, Michael G. & Sandmo, Agnar, 1972. "Income tax evasion: a theoretical analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(3-4), pages 323-338, November.
    17. Raj Chetty, 2009. "The Simple Economics of Salience and Taxation," NBER Working Papers 15246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Zeddies, Götz, 2015. "Corporate Taxation and Firm Location in Germany," IWH Discussion Papers 2/2015, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).

    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. José Durán-Cabré & Alejandro Esteller-Moré & Luca Salvadori, 2015. "Empirical evidence on horizontal competition in tax enforcement," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 22(5), pages 834-860, October.
    2. Christian Kelders & Marko Koethenbuerger, 2010. "Tax incentives in fiscal federalism: an integrated perspective," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(2), pages 683-703, May.
    3. Till Gross, 2021. "Dynamic Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Transfer Union," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 42, pages 194-238, October.
    4. Christian Traxler & Andreas Reutter, 2008. "Apportionment, Fiscal Equalization and Decentralized Tax Enforcement," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2008_21, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    5. Caterina Liesegang & Marco Runkel, 2009. "Corporate Income Taxation of Multinationals and Fiscal Equalization," CESifo Working Paper Series 2747, CESifo.
    6. Wladislaw Mill & Cornelius Schneider, 2023. "The Bright Side of Tax Evasion," CESifo Working Paper Series 10615, CESifo.
    7. Caterina Liesegang & Marco Runkel, 2018. "Tax competition and fiscal equalization under corporate income taxation," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(2), pages 311-324, April.
    8. Plachta, Robert C., 2008. "Fiscal Equalisation and the Soft Budget Constraint," FiFo Discussion Papers - Finanzwissenschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 08-8, University of Cologne, FiFo Institute for Public Economics.
    9. Thiess Buettner & Robert Schwager & Sebastian Hauptmeier, 2011. "Efficient Revenue Sharing and Upper-Level Governments: Theory and Application to Germany," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 167(4), pages 647-667, December.
    10. Michael Smart, 2007. "Raising taxes through equalization," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1188-1212, November.
    11. Hindriks, Jean & Peralta, Susana & Weber, Shlomo, 2008. "Competing in taxes and investment under fiscal equalization," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(12), pages 2392-2402, December.
    12. Manuel E. Lago & Santiago Lago-Peñas & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2024. "On the effects of intergovernmental grants: a survey," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 31(3), pages 856-908, June.
    13. Carl Gaigné & Stéphane Riou, 2007. "Globalization, Asymmetric Tax Competition, and Fiscal Equalization," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 9(5), pages 901-925, October.
    14. Lisa Grazzini & Alessandro Petretto, 2006. "Vertical Tax Competition with Tax Sharing and Equalization Grants," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 65(1), pages 75-94, May.
    15. Alejandro Esteller & Amedeo Piolatto & Matthew D. Rablen, 2016. "Taxing high-income earners: tax avoidance and mobility," IFS Working Papers W16/07, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    16. Janeba, Eckhard & Todtenhaupt, Maximilian, 2018. "Fiscal competition and public debt," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 47-61.
    17. Nicola Lacetera & Devin G. Pope & Justin R. Sydnor, 2012. "Heuristic Thinking and Limited Attention in the Car Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2206-2236, August.
    18. Alstadsæter, Annette & Jacob, Martin, 2013. "The effect of awareness and incentives on tax evasion," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 147, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    19. Krause, Manuela & Büttner, Thiess, 2017. "Does Fiscal Equalization Lead to Higher Tax Rates? Empirical Evidence from Germany," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168214, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Bev Dahlby & Kevin Milligan, 2017. "From theory to practice: Canadian economists’ contributions to public finance," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(5), pages 1324-1347, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
    • H22 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Incidence
    • H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General

    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:zbw:vfsc14:100622. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.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.