A common objection to “sin taxes”—corrective taxes on goods that are thought to be overconsumed, such as cigarettes, alcohol, and sugary drinks—is that they often fall disproportionately on low-income consumers. This paper studies the interaction between corrective and redistributive...

A common objection to "sin taxes"--corrective taxes on goods that are thought to be overconsumed, such as cigarettes, alcohol, and sugary drinks--is that they often fall disproportionately on low-income consumers. This paper studies the interaction between corrective and redistributive motives...

Has the VAT proved, as its proponents claim, an especially effective form of taxation? To address this, this paper first shows that a tax innovation-such as the introduction of a VAT- reduces the marginal cost of public funds if and only if it also leads an optimizing government to increase the...

This paper provides a legal and economic analysis of the European Commission’s recent proposals for reforming the application of VAT to financial services, with particular focus on their ‘third pillar’, under which firms would be allowed to opt in to taxation on exempt insurance and...