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Regressive taxation plays an increasingly important role in financing public programs, but prior studies have not fully explored the conditions under which citizens would support such financing strategies. This paper fills this gap by focusing on the United States, where sales taxes account for nearly one-third of state government revenue, and sales tax ballot measures have received majority support. I conducted an online survey experiment to examine two potential sources of public support for a sales tax increase: equal treatment beliefs (i.e., that all taxpayers should pay the same rate) and a lack of public awareness of the distributive consequences of sales taxes. I find that exposure to information about sales taxes' distributive consequences significantly reduced respondents' support for a sales tax increase, but that equal treatment beliefs had no significant effect on such support. Additional analyses suggest that other-regarding motivations are a plausible mechanism underlying the effects of information provision. These findings shed light on how misperceptions of tax burdens shape support for regressive taxation and have broad implications for how fairness beliefs influence tax policy preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Companies affected by California’s cap-and-trade legislation are allotted certain credits for production that can be used or sold and can purchase additional credits from the state, which become a revenue source to be used for activities that reduce carbon emissions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate who ultimately pays for this program, its effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions in accordance with established goals, and the related effectiveness to advance social, economic, and environmental equity. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology used for this research is secondary data analysis, triangulating three sources: California’s Climate Change Investment Reports, 2019-2021; repositories maintained by the California High-Speed Rail Authority and the California Air Resources Board; and a review of the literature and websites from other professional sources which addressed, directly and indirectly, the topics and questions explored in the study. Findings – Key findings include evidence of enhancing social and environmental equity but ineffectiveness in reducing carbon emissions in accordance with state goals. Furthermore, the program displays evidence of economic inequity as it demonstrates characteristics of regressive taxation and an inability of low-income persons to acquire electric vehicles due to high costs. Originality/value – The research effort is unique in that no other academic efforts were located which attempt to examine the cap-and-trade program’s effectiveness in attaining its goals.

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Copyright of Revista Técnica Tributaria is the property of Asociacion Espanola de Asesores Fiscales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

The current consensus among comparative political scientists postulates that diverse democracies redistribute less than homogeneous ones. However, whereas homogeneous democracies redistribute more on average, diverse democracies exhibit high variation in redistributive outcomes. Why does ascriptive heterogeneity stifle redistribution in some cases but not in others? In this article, it is argued that diversity undermines redistributive outcomes when identity groups differ more starkly in their income levels. More importantly, under these conditions, the policy outcomes are not uniform: rather than general cutbacks, richer groups selectively under‐prioritise benefits and access for poorer, minority‐heavy groups while keeping their own redistributive interests protected. The result is not simply less redistribution aggregately, but a more exclusionary and regressive welfare state that prioritises the social needs of better‐off identity groups. Empirical support is found for these hypotheses using macrocomparative panel data on multiple redistributive aspects in 22 developed democracies in the years 1980–2011. The article thus outlines a conditional and more nuanced relationship between diversity and redistributive outcomes than commonly assumed, as well as several broader lessons for research of identity politics and social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper seeks to answer the question: What tax or combination of taxes knowledgeable individuals think the South African government can use as a potential source of revenue to fund the proposed National Health Insurance? The research methodology adopted is of an exploratory interpretive nature as it deals with the opinions of respondents. This methodology is well suited to the research process as the goal is to obtain and explore knowledgeable individuals' opinions on what they perceive to be the best tax or combination of taxes which can be used as a potential source of revenue to finance the National Health Insurance fund. The method initially comprised a normative study, focusing on a literature review, the results of which were then used to create a self-developed questionnaire. This research aims to contribute to the body of knowledge which the South African government can consider when making a decision on a tax or combination of taxes as a possible method of financing. A sample of 91 people consisting of 40 tax practitioners (44%), 33 academics (36.2%) and 18 economists (19.8%) were asked to complete the questionnaire. The resultant data were subjected to various statistical analysis methods, including factor analysis, Kruskal-Wallis tests and Cluster analysis. The results reveal that (a) an increase in Value-Added tax is perceived as being justifiable, fair and efficient, while (b) an increase in taxes on individuals or an introduction of payroll taxes is not. The respondents suggest that funds be ring-fenced for National Health Insurance as this will increase accountability and prevent the funds from being expropriated during the budgetary process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the Carter Commission's report, the proposal to integrate the personal and corporation income taxes is part of a larger effort to achieve a more comprehensive tax base for Canada. This broadening of the Canadian tax base allows the commission to think in terms of a corporate withholding rate of 50% to match a maximum rate of 50% on personal income. Apparently there is some belief that a withholding rate on corporations in excess of 50% would have an adverse effect on corporate savings and growth. We question this view. In fact, the main point the present authors wish to make is that, at least for the United States, the complete integration of the corporation profit tax could be achieved independently of other tax reforms and should be feasible even with a corporate withholding rate as high as 70.0%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calculates the distribution of an adjusted measure of income that deducts damages due to exposure to air pollution from reported market income in the United States from 2011 to 2014. The Gini coefficient for this measure of adjusted income is 0.682 in 2011, as compared to 0.482 for market income. By 2014, we estimate that the Gini for adjusted income fell to 0.646, while the market income Gini did not appreciably change. The inclusion of air pollution damage acts like a regressive tax: with air pollution, the bottom 20% of households lose roughly 10% of the share of income, while the top 20% of households gain 10%. We find that, unlike the case for market income, New England is not the most unequal division with respect to adjusted income. Further, the difference between adjusted income for white and Hispanics is smaller than expected. However, the gap in augmented income between whites and African-Americans is widening. [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]

Environmental taxation represents a key influence on sustainable development in post-transition countries. Romania has experienced important transformations of environmental policy, including taxation, due to sustained reliance on traditional energy sources to satisfy its energy needs. The aim of this paper is to show a possible causal relationship between the Romanian GDP and several explanatory variables related to taxation of environmental damage and energy generation and consumption in the country. In order to do this, the authors make use of several statistical tests to verify the existence of a meaningful relationship between economic variables expressed in time series. The study has also attempted to identify the influence of environmental taxation on ensuring green economic development, starting from the premise that for emergent economies these taxes provide both a GDP increase and prevent environmental degradation by decreasing the pollution and environmentally harmful supplies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To analyse the impact of the Polish fiscal regime on the general revenue of the country, and specifically to establish whether the cumulative tax burden borne by Polish households is progressive or regressive. Methodology: On the basis of Eurostat and OECD data, the author has analysed fiscal regimes in EU Member States and in OECD countries. The tax burden of households within different income groups has also been examined pursuant to applicable fiscal laws and data pertaining to the revenue and expenditure of households published by the Central Statistical Office (CSO). Conclusions: The fiscal regime in Poland is regressive; that is, the relative fiscal burden decreases as the taxpayer's income increases. Research Implications: The article contributes to the on-going discussion on social cohesion, in particular with respect to economic policy instruments aimed at the redistribution of income within the economy. Originality: The author presents an analysis of data pertaining to fiscal policies in EU Member States and OECD countries and assesses the impact of the legal environment (fiscal regime and social security system) in Poland on income distribution within the economy. The impact of the total tax burden (direct and indirect taxes, social security contributions) on the economic situation of households from different income groups has been calculated using an original formula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has argued that the American welfare state is not necessarily smaller than the welfare state in other advanced industrial countries. Rather, it is organized on principles that make it seem smaller: Because it functions through tax expenditures and public-private partnerships, it is less visible than welfare states that operate on the principle of direct spending. This review summarizes the most important messages of this revisionist scholarship, particularly in how this form of welfare provision undermines support for the welfare state, increases the complexity and decreases the efficiency of the system, and hides regressive policies from public scrutiny. I then argue that although this work has taught us much about American politics, several gaps need to be addressed. First, the explanation of the origins of this state of affairs is incomplete and unconvincing. Second, while private welfare is an important part of the American experience, the scholarship on private welfare provision has not yet grappled with the fact that private welfare was also historically found in many other advanced industrial countries, but did not crowd out the public welfare state there as it has in the United States. Finally, although the scholarship has usefully called attention to the invisibility of tax expenditures, we should not consider tax expenditures part of the 'welfare state,' because they only rarely accomplish the functions of redistribution and risk pooling of public welfare programs. Rather, in most cases, tax expenditures should be seen as tax cuts, that is, diminishment of state capacity. These observations suggest that the scholarship would benefit from broader engagement with the comparative literature on political economy and from a more precise and conceptually grounded definition of the 'welfare state.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the optimal dividend payment problem in piecewise-deterministic compound Poisson risk models. The objective is to maximize the expected discounted dividend payout up to the time of ruin. We provide a comparative study in this general framework of both restricted and unrestricted payment schemes, which were only previously treated separately in certain special cases of risk models in the literature. In the case of restricted payment scheme, the value function is shown to be a classical solution of the corresponding HJB equation, which in turn leads to an optimal restricted payment policy known as the threshold strategy. In the case of unrestricted payment scheme, by solving the associated integro-differential quasi-variational inequality, we obtain the value function as well as an optimal unrestricted dividend payment scheme known as the barrier strategy. When claim sizes are exponentially distributed, we provide easily verifiable conditions under which the threshold and barrier strategies are optimal restricted and unrestricted dividend payment policies, respectively. The main results are illustrated with several examples, including a new example concerning regressive growth rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the significance and limitations of the assessment caps on the property tax, which is regarded as the largest source of tax revenue for local governments in the U.S. It analyzes the factors responsible for the unpopularity and dissatisfaction related to the property tax including regressiveness imposing burdens on middle and lower class, growth in property rate and incresed inflation rate. It analyzes beneficiaries of property tax caps in the New York City.