The harmonized European value-added tax (VAT) is anything but a modern consumption tax that taxes all goods and services at a uniform rate. As exemplified by an analysis of the Dutch version, some 60% of the base is exempted, that is, not taxed on output but on inputs. This has serious...

There is often a gap between the prescriptions of an "optimal" tax system and actual tax systems, some of which can be neither efficient economically nor efficient at redistributing income. With a focus on personal income taxes, this paper reviews the political economics literature on tax...

The efficiency case for raising fuel tax minima under the EU Energy Tax Directive (ETD) appears nuanced. Some fuels may be undertaxed (e.g., road diesel, natural gas), while others may be adequately taxed already (e.g., gasoline). Reform proposals would increase some minima, including for road...

Despite sharp reductions in corporate income tax (CIT) rates worldwide, CIT revenues have not fallen dramatically in the last two decades. This paper investigates the recent developments in CIT in the European Union, by taking a closer look at the potential driving forces behind this puzzle....

Does ownership affect the way firms react to corporate taxation? This paper exploits key features of recent corporate tax reforms in China to shed light on the differential impact of taxation on firms under different ownership regimes including private, collectively owned and state owned...

The reform of corporate and business taxation is central to current tax policy debates in the United States. This paper provides a framework for analyzing reform proposals by describing the lessons from current economic research for business tax reform, addressing both international and domestic...

Using a panel of 97 mostly developing and transitional countries for the period 1990-2011, this paper explores fiscal implications of membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Em-ploying robust difference-in-difference specifications as well as semi-parametric methods, we find that...

The literature on household behavior contains hardly any empirical research on the withinhousehold distributional effect of tax-benefit policies. We simulate this effect in the framework of a collective model of labor supply when shifting from a joint to an individual taxation system in France....