TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hines,James R., Jr.
AU  - Hlinko,John C.
AU  - Lubke,Theodore J.F.
TI  - From Each According to His Surplus: Equi-Proportionate Sharing of Commodity Tax Burdens
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Technical Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 138
PY  - 1996
Y2  - April 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/t0138
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/t0138.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James R. Hines
Department of Economics
University of Michigan
343 Lorch Hall
611 Tappan Street
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1220
Tel: 734/764-2320
Fax: 734/764-2769
E-Mail: jrhines@umich.edu
AB  - This paper examines the incidence of commodity taxes, finding that, when demand and marginal cost schedules are linear. the burden of commodity taxation is distributed between buyers and sellers so that each suffers the same percentage reduction on pre-tax surplus. This equiproportionate reduction in surplus is the outcome of commodity taxes set at any rate, and is unaffected by relative demand and supply elasticities. Hence, when demand and marginal cost schedules are linear, commodity taxes resemble flat-rate taxes imposed on market surplus. Similar results apply to nonlinear schedules with certain ranges.
ER  -