IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2964.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Non-Neutral Taxation and the Efficiency Gains of the 1986 Tax Reform Act - - A New Look

Author

Listed:
  • Jane G. Gravelle

Abstract

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 considerably altered the differentials between taxes on corporate and noncorporate capital. Conventional wisdom, relying on various incarnations of the Harberger model, suggests rather small efficiency effects from these changes in corporate tax wedges. But the Harberger models appear to understate greatly the efficiency effects of changes in the corporate tax wedge because they do not admit production of the same good by both corporate and noncorporate firms. A new model which allows corporate and noncorporate firms to coexist within the same industry suggests a significant efficiency gain from the Tax Reform Act. The model predicts that the new law reduced excess burden by at least $31 billion and eliminated about half of the total distortion from non-neutral taxation. Most of this gain occurs because the Tax Reform Act, while keeping the aggregate effective tax rate constant, considerably narrowed these differentials in industries where there is substantial noncorporate production.

Suggested Citation

  • Jane G. Gravelle, 1989. "Non-Neutral Taxation and the Efficiency Gains of the 1986 Tax Reform Act - - A New Look," NBER Working Papers 2964, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2964
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2964.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. N/A, 1985. "General Policy," India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs, , vol. 41(1), pages 74-79, January.
    2. N/A, 1985. "General Policy," India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs, , vol. 41(1), pages 112-117, January.
    3. Shoven, John B, 1976. "The Incidence and Efficiency Effects of Taxes on Income from Capital," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(6), pages 1261-1283, December.
    4. Ballard, Charles L. & Fullerton, Don & Shoven, John B. & Whalley, John, 2009. "A General Equilibrium Model for Tax Policy Evaluation," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226036335, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alan J. Auerbach & Joel Slemrod, 1997. "The Economic Effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 589-632, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. World Bank, 2001. "Mexico Energy Environment Review," World Bank Publications - Reports 20297, The World Bank Group.
    2. Fullerton, Don & Henderson, Yolanda Kodrzycki, 1989. "A Disaggregate Equilibrium Model of the Tax Distortions among Assets, Sectors, and Industries," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 30(2), pages 391-413, May.
    3. Doroodian, K. & Boyd, Roy, 2003. "The linkage between oil price shocks and economic growth with inflation in the presence of technological advances: a CGE model," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(10), pages 989-1006, August.
    4. Fehr, Hans, 1999. "Welfare Effects of Dynamic Tax Reforms," Beiträge zur Finanzwissenschaft, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, edition 1, volume 5, number urn:isbn:9783161470165, September.
    5. Gravelle, Jane G & Kotlikoff, Laurence J, 1989. "The Incidence and Efficiency Costs of Corporate Taxation When Corporate and Noncorporate Firms Produce the Same Good," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 749-780, August.
    6. Fehr, Hans & Wiegard, Wolfgang, 1996. "Numerische Gleichgewichtsmodelle: Grundstruktur, Anwendungen und Erkenntnisgehalt," Tübinger Diskussionsbeiträge 75, University of Tübingen, School of Business and Economics.
    7. Ferran Sancho, 2003. "Energy Tax Simulation in a Flexible CGE Model of Catalonia," Working Papers 95, Barcelona School of Economics.
    8. Touhami Abdelkhalek & Jean-Marie Dufour, 1998. "Statistical Inference For Computable General Equilibrium Models, With Application To A Model Of The Moroccan Economy," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(4), pages 520-534, November.
    9. Craig Burnside & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 1995. "Capital Utilization and Returns to Scale," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1995, Volume 10, pages 67-124, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Andreas Peichl, 2009. "The Benefits and Problems of Linking Micro and Macro Models — Evidence from a Flat Tax Analysis," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 301-329, November.
    11. Mark Partridge & Dan Rickman, 2010. "Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Modelling for Regional Economic Development Analysis," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(10), pages 1311-1328.
    12. Engel, Eduardo M. R. A. & Galetovic, Alexander & Raddatz, Claudio E., 1999. "Taxes and income distribution in Chile: some unpleasant redistributive arithmetic," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 155-192, June.
    13. Robinson, Sherman & Yunez-Naude, Antonio & Hinojosa-Ojeda, Raul & Lewis, Jeffrey D. & Devarajan, Shantayanan, 1999. "From stylized to applied models:: Building multisector CGE models for policy analysis," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 5-38.
    14. Leslie E. Papke, 1993. "What Do We Know about Enterprise Zones?," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 7, pages 37-72, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Don Fullerton & Yolanda Kodrzycki Henderson, 1987. "The Impact of Fundamental Tax Reform on the Allocation of Resources," NBER Chapters, in: The Effects of Taxation on Capital Accumulation, pages 401-444, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Peichl, Andreas, 2008. "The benefits of linking CGE and Microsimulation Models - Evidence from a Flat Tax analysis," FiFo Discussion Papers - Finanzwissenschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 08-6, University of Cologne, FiFo Institute for Public Economics.
    17. Strulik, Holger & Trimborn, Timo, 2010. "Anticipated tax reforms and temporary tax cuts: A general equilibrium analysis," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2141-2158, October.
    18. Saadia Refaqat, 2005. "Redistributive Impact of GST Tax Reform: Pakistan, 1990-2001," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 44(4), pages 841-862.
    19. Fehr, Hans & Wiegard, Wolfgang, 1995. "A computable general equilibrium model for the examination of worldwide agricultural liberalization policies: Model structure and preliminary results," Tübinger Diskussionsbeiträge 50, University of Tübingen, School of Business and Economics.
    20. Inge Mayeres, 1999. "The Distributional Impacts of Policies for the Control of Transport Externalities.An Applied General Equilibrium Model," Working Papers 1999.8, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2964. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.