Purposes of taxation

Contents

Introduction

Classes of taxes

Direct and indirect taxes

Proportional, progressive, and regressive taxes

Purposes of taxation

4. Principles of taxation: Four "R"s

Distribution of tax burdens

Economic efficiency

Ease of administration and compliance

Economic goals

5. Tax haven

Introduction

This paper is concerned with taxation in general, its principles, its objectives, and its effects; specifically, it discusses the nature and purposes of taxation, whether taxes should be classified as direct or indirect, the history of taxation, canons and criteria of taxation, and economic effects of taxation, including shifting and incidence (identifying who bears the ultimate burden of taxes when that burden is passed from the person or entity deemed legally responsible for it to another). For further discussion of taxation’s role in fiscal policy, see government economic policy. In addition, seeinternational trade for information on tariffs.

In modern economies taxes are the most important source of governmental revenue. Taxes differ from other sources of revenue in that they are compulsory levies and are unrequited—i.e., they are generally not paid in exchange for some specific thing, such as a particular public service, the sale of public property, or the issuance of public debt. But exists opinion that taxes a not unrequited, because it is a payment to government, which responses not to break the laws and rights and even defend them. While taxes are presumably collected for the welfare of taxpayers as a whole, the individual taxpayer’s liability is independent of any specific benefit received. There are, however, important exceptions: payroll taxes, for example, are commonly levied on labour income in order to finance retirement benefits, medical payments, and other social security programs—all of which are likely to benefit the taxpayer. Because of the likely link between taxes paid and benefits received, payroll taxes are sometimes called “contributions” (as in the United States). Nevertheless, the payments are commonly compulsory, and the link to benefits is sometimes quite weak. Another example of a tax that is linked to benefits received, if only loosely, is the use of taxes on motor fuels to finance the construction and maintenance of roads and highways, whose services can be enjoyed only by consuming taxed motor fuels.

Classes of taxes

In the literature of public finance, taxes have been classified in various ways according to who pays for them, who bears the ultimate burden of them, the extent to which the burden can be shifted, and various other criteria. Taxes are most commonly classified as either direct or indirect, an example of the former type being the income tax and of the latter the sales tax. There is much disagreement among economists as to the criteria for distinguishing between direct and indirect taxes, and it is unclear into which category certain taxes, such as corporate income tax or property tax, should fall. It is usually said that a direct tax is one that cannot be shifted by the taxpayer to someone else, whereas an indirect tax can be.

An economic definition, by Atkinson, states that "...direct taxes may be adjusted to the individual characteristics of the taxpayer, whereas indirect taxes are levied on transactions irrespective of the circumstances of buyer or seller."

Direct taxes

Direct taxes are primarily taxes on natural persons (e.g., individuals), and they are typically based on the taxpayer’s ability to pay as measured by income, consumption, or net wealth. What follows is a description of the main types of direct taxes.

Individual income taxes are commonly levied on total personal net income of the taxpayer (which may be an individual, a couple, or a family) in excess of some stipulated minimum. They are also commonly adjusted to take into account the circumstances influencing the ability to pay, such as family status, number and age of children, and financial burdens resulting from illness. The taxes are often levied at graduated rates, meaning hat the rates rise as income rises. Personal exemptions for the taxpayer and family can create a range of income that is subject to a tax rate of zero.

Taxes on net worth are levied on the total net worth of a person—that is, the value of his assets minus his liabilities. As with the income tax, the personal circumstances of the taxpayer can be taken into consideration.

Personal or direct taxes on consumption (also known as expenditure taxes or spending taxes) are essentially levied on all income that is not channeled intosavings. In contrast to indirect taxes on spending, such as the sales tax, a direct consumption tax can be adjusted to an individual’s ability to pay by allowing for marital status, age, number of dependents, and so on.

Although long attractive to theorists, this form of tax has been used in only two countries, India and Sri Lanka; both instances were brief and unsuccessful. Near the end of the 20th century, the “flat tax”—which achieves economic effects similar to those of the directconsumption tax by exempting most income from capital—came to be viewed favourably by tax experts. No country has adopted a tax with the base of the flat tax, although many have income taxes with only one rate.

Taxes at death take two forms: the inheritance tax, where the taxable object is the bequest received by the person inheriting, and the estate tax, where the object is the total estate left by the deceased. Inheritance taxes sometimes take into account the personal circumstances of the taxpayer, such as the taxpayer’s relationship to the donor and his net worth before receiving the bequest. Estate taxes, however, are generally graduated according to the size of the estate, and in some countries they provide tax-exempt transfers to the spouse and make an allowance for the number of heirs involved.

In order to prevent the death duties from being circumvented through an exchange of property prior to death, tax systems may include a tax on gifts above a certain threshold made between living persons - gift tax). Taxes on transfers do not ordinarily yield much revenue, if only because large tax payments can be easily avoided through estate planning.

Indirect taxes

Indirect taxes are levied on the production or consumption of goods and services or on transactions, including imports and exports. Examples include general and selective sales taxes, value-added taxes (VAT), taxes on any aspect of manufacturing or production, taxes on legal transactions, and customs or import duties.

General sales taxes are levies that are applied to a substantial portion of consumer expenditures. The same tax rate can be applied to all taxed items, or different items (such as food or clothing) can be subject to different rates. Single-stage taxes can be collected at the retail level, as the U.S. states do, or they can be collected at a pre-retail (i.e., manufacturing or wholesale) level, as occurs in some developing countries. Multistage taxes are applied at each stage in the production-distribution process. The VAT, which increased in popularity during the second half of the 20th century, is commonly collected by allowing the taxpayer to deduct a credit for tax paid on purchases from liability on sales. The VAT has largely replaced the turnover tax—a tax on each stage of the production and distribution chain, with no relief for tax paid at previous stages. The cumulative effect of the turnover tax, commonly known as tax cascading, distorts economic decisions.

Although they are generally applied to a wide range of products, sales taxes sometimes exempt necessities to reduce the tax burden of low-income households. By comparison, excises are levied only on particular commodities or services. While some countries impose excises and customs duties on almost everything—from necessities such as bread, meat, and salt, to nonessentials such as cigarettes, wine, liquor, coffee, and tea, to luxuries such as jewels and furs—taxes on a limited group of products—alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, and motor fuel—yield the bulk of excise revenues for most countries. In earlier centuries, taxes on consumer durables were applied to luxury commodities such as pianos, saddle horses, carriages, and billiard tables. Today a main luxury tax object is the automobile, largely because registration requirements facilitate administration of the tax. Some countries tax gambling, and state-run lotteries have effects similar to excises, with the government’s “take” being, in effect, a tax on gambling. Some countries impose taxes on raw materials, intermediate goods (e.g.,mineral oil, alcohol), and machinery.

Some excises and customs duties are specific—i.e., they are levied on the basis of number, weight, length, volume, or other specific characteristics of the good or service being taxed. Other excises, like sales taxes, are ad valorem—levied on the value of the goods as measured by the price. Taxes on legal transactions are levied on the issue of shares, on the sale (or transfer) of houses and land, and on stock exchange transactions. For administrative reasons, they frequently take the form of stamp duties; that is, the legal or commercial document is stamped to denote payment of the tax. Many tax analysts regard stamp taxes as nuisance taxes; they are most often found in less-developed countries and frequently bog down the transactions to which they are applied.

Purposes of taxation

During the 19th century the prevalent idea was that taxes should serve mainly to finance the government. In earlier times, and again today, governments have utilized taxation for other than merely fiscal purposes. One useful way to view the purpose of taxation, attributable to American economist Richard A. Musgrave, is to distinguish between objectives of resource allocation, income redistribution, and economic stability. (Economic growth or development and international competitiveness are sometimes listed as separate goals, but they can generally be subsumed under the other three.) In the absence of a strong reason for interference, such as the need to reduce pollution, the first objective, resource allocation, is furthered if tax policy does not interfere with market-determined allocations. The second objective,income redistribution, is meant to lessen inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth. The objective of stabilization—implemented through tax policy, government expenditure policy, monetary policy, and debt management—is that of maintaining high employment and price stability.

There are likely to be conflicts among these three objectives. For example, resource allocation might require changes in the level or composition (or both) of taxes, but those changes might bear heavily on low-income families—thus upsetting redistributive goals. As another example, taxes that are highly redistributive may conflict with the efficientallocation of resources required to achieve the goal of economic neutrality.

A nation's tax system is often a reflection of its communal values or/and the values of those in power. To create a system of taxation, a nation must make choices regarding the distribution of the tax burden—who will pay taxes and how much they will pay—and how the taxes collected will be spent. In democratic nations where the public elects those in charge of establishing the tax system, these choices reflect the type of community that the public and/or government wishes to create.

In countries where the public does not have a significant amount of influence over the system of taxation, that system may be more of a reflection on the values of those in power.

4. Principles of taxation: Four "R"s

Taxation has four main purposes or effects: Revenue, Redistribution, Repricing, and Representation

1. The main purpose is revenue: taxes raise money to spend on armies, roads, schools and hospitals, and on more indirect government functions like market regulation or legal systems.

2. A second is redistribution. Normally, this means transferring wealth from the richer sections of society to poorer sections.

3. A third purpose of taxation is repricing. Taxes are levied to address externalities; for example,tobacco is taxed to discourage smoking, and a carbon tax discourages use of carbon-based fuels.

4. A fourth, consequential effect of taxation in its historical setting has been representation. The American revolutionary slogan "no taxation without representation" implied this: rulers tax citizens, and citizens demand accountability from their rulers as the other part of this bargain. Studies have shown that direct taxation (such as income taxes) generates the greatest degree of accountabilityand better governance, while indirect taxation tends to have smaller effects.

Although they need to be reinterpreted from time to time, these principles retain remarkable relevance. From the first can be derived some leading views about what is fair in the distribution of tax burdens among taxpayers. These are: the belief that taxes should be based on the individual’s ability to pay, known as the ability-to-pay principle, and the benefit principle, the idea that there should be some equivalence between what the individual pays and the benefits he subsequently receives from governmental activities. The fourth of Smith’s canons can be interpreted to underlie the emphasis many economists place on a tax system that does not interfere with market decision making, as well as the more obvious need to avoid complexity and corruption.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 1951