The Incidence of Australian Taxation.

This paper estimates the incidence of total Australian taxation in 1966-67, the incidence of taxation at the Federal, State and local government levels and of some individual direct and indirect taxes. It constitutes the first of a series of studies concerned with the problems of estimating the incidence of taxes and of government expenditures. The aim of the present paper is to provide estimates of Australian tax incidence together with a brief discussion of the nature and reasonableness of the incidence assumptions necessarily adopted in a study of this nature. Consideration of the more fundamental theoretical incidence problems and the formulation of a tax model for tax incidence will be presented in a later paper. There are five sections. The first deals with the data sources and their limitations. The second outlines the methodology decisions made. This is followed by a discussion of the incidence assumptions adopted and a description of the techniques by which each type of tax was allocated to household income classes. In the fourth section the results are presented, and the final section consists of a brief discussion of some policy implications arising from the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]