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The Optimal Grouping of Commodities for Indirect Taxation

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  • Pascal Belan

    (Crest)

  • Stéphane Gauthier

    (Crest)

  • Guy Laroque

    (Crest)

Abstract

Indirect taxes contribute to a sizeable part of government revenues around theworld. Typically there are a few different tax rates, and the goods are partitionedinto classes associated with each rate. The present paper studies how to group thegoods in these few classes. We take as given the number of tax rates and study theoptimal aggregation (or classification) of commodities of the fiscal authority in asecond best setup. The results are illustrated on data from the United Kingdom.

Suggested Citation

  • Pascal Belan & Stéphane Gauthier & Guy Laroque, 2005. "The Optimal Grouping of Commodities for Indirect Taxation," Working Papers 2005-15, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    • Handle: RePEc:crs:wpaper:2005-15
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    Cited by:

    1. Stéphane Gauthier, 2013. "Optimal tax base with administrative fixed costs," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 20(6), pages 961-973, December.
    2. Julien Daubanes & Pierre Lasserre, 2011. "Optimum Commodity Taxation with a Non-Renewable Resource," CIRANO Working Papers 2011s-05, CIRANO.
    3. Robin Boadway & Katherine Cuff, 2023. "The Case for Uniform Commodity Taxation: A Tax Reform Approach," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 244(1), pages 79-109, March.
    4. Braouezec, Yann, 2016. "On the welfare effects of regulating the number of discriminatory prices," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(4), pages 588-607.
    5. Lim Jean & Rodríguez-Zamora Carolina, 2010. "The Optimal Tax Rule in the Presence of Time Use," Working Papers 2010-05, Banco de México.
    6. Belan, Pascal & Gauthier, Stephane, 2006. "Optimal indirect taxation with a restricted number of tax rates," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 1201-1213, August.
    7. repec:hal:pseose:hal-00731095 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Christian Gillitzer & Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Joel Slemrod, 2017. "A Characteristics Approach to Optimal Taxation: Line Drawing and Tax‐Driven Product Innovation," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 119(2), pages 240-267, April.
    9. Alain Babatounde & Bart Capeau & Romain Houssa, 2023. "Welfare effects of indirect tax policies in West Africa," DeFiPP Working Papers 2301, University of Namur, Development Finance and Public Policies.
    10. Robin Boadway, 2017. "Second-Best Theory: Ageing well at Sixty," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 249-270, May.
    11. Boadway, Robin & Cuff, Katherine, 2022. "A generalization of the Deaton-Hellwig results on uniform commodity taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    12. Yann Braouezec, 2013. "The Welfare Effects of Regulating the Number of Market Segments," Working Papers 2013-ECO-11, IESEG School of Management.

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