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This article examines the effect of home price distribution on the likelihood of parcel tax adoption in California school districts. A parcel tax is a regressive tax imposed as the same amount per unit of property regardless of property values and requires a two-thirds supermajority vote to be adopted. Despite the growing role that local parcel taxes have in funding public education, it has not been fully understood how their regressive nature influences adoption. I argue that because the regressive tax imposes different marginal property tax rates for voters, the distribution of home prices within a district determines the likelihood of parcel tax adoption. Using the Heckman selection models with California school district–level data, I find that a large gap in home values within a district significantly lowers the likelihood of parcel tax adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six essays explore taxation policy and practice, from competition between neighboring cities to increasingly vigorous policing and the packagaing of regressive taxes as “flat.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures the direct and indirect incidence of a carbon tax using current income and two measures of lifetime income to rank households. Our results suggest that carbon taxes are more regressive when annual income is used as a measure of economic welfare than when lifetime income measures are used. Further, the direct component of the tax, in any given year, is significantly more regressive than the indirect component. We observe a modest shift over time with the direct component of carbon taxes becoming lass regressive and the indirect component becoming more regressive. These effects mostly offset each other and the distribution of the total tax burden has not changed much over time. In addition we find that regional variation has fluctuated over the years of our analysis. By 2003 there is little systematic variation in carbon tax burdens across regions of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denmark's income tax burden as the percentage of GDP is larger than the total tax burden of the United States, and it has increased further after 1980. How can this be explained, given increasing tax competition and widespread views that strong reliance on regressive taxes was conducive to building and maintaining large tax and welfare states? The article highlights three factors: First, large income taxes are feasible if the capital tax burden is moderated within the income tax. Second, the effective capital income tax burden that had developed up to the early 1980s was extremely low so that subsequent tax reforms could cut marginal tax rates on mobile types of capital income while increasing tax revenue. Third, drastic changes in the legal structure of the income tax and stability in aggregate tax policy outcomes were facilitated by proportional representation and legislative majority rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that youth gambling is a formidable social problem that draws on those who can least afford it, is partly derived from a general disempowerment from society, and as a consequence, is connected with risk-taking behaviors such as drug and alcohol abuse. To explore further the complex nature of youth gambling and its relation to social disadvantage, the empirical analysis incorporates comparisons between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth and between male and female youth. The conclusions suggest that youth gambling is a form of regressive taxation that exploits those who are most vulnerable because of their socioeconomic marginality and their feelings of relative powerlessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the nature of the 1989 anti-poll tax movement (APTM) in Great Britain. Its social base, forms of organization and tactics have been considered in relation to theoretical debates about new social movements and poor people's movements. In 1989-90 a regressive local tax, the Community Charge or poll tax as it became known, was introduced by the Conservative government. It was in many ways the ultimate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's policy, encapsulating the individualistic, market oriented neo-liberal ideology of the Thatcher governments. Its implementation was met by widespread sometimes violent protest, and a systematic campaign of non-payment. In response the tax was replaced by the more progressive Council Tax. The research in this paper is based on interviews with activists in local APT groups in Leeds, using the well established strategy in political and urban sociology of interviewing "key informants." Tape recorded semi-structured interviews lasting about 1-2 hours were conducted with activists either singly or in small groups of 3-4 during the summer of 1991. Other sources include national newspapers, and secondary sources concerned with APTM.