TY  - JOUR
AU  - Auerbach,Alan J.
TI  - The Choice Between Income and Consumption Taxes: A Primer
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12307
PY  - 2006
Y2  - June 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12307
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12307.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alan J. Auerbach
Department of Economics
508-1 Evans Hall, #3880
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: 510/643-0711
Fax: 510/643-0413
E-Mail: auerbach@econ.berkeley.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2006-06-19
AB  - It has now been nearly three decades since the publication of two important volumes that laid out many of the details of how one might implement a progressive consumption tax (Institute for Fiscal Studies, 1978; U.S. Treasury, 1977). Over the years since, many contributions have analyzed the mechanics of the different variants of consumption taxation, the potential efficiency and distributional effects of their adoption, the issues of administration and transition from the current tax system, and the problems relating to certain types of transactions. But much of what we %u201Cknow%u201D is not part of the general policy discussion and there are important issues that the literature has recognized but still not resolved. The aim of this paper is to lay out the key economic issues involved in deciding whether and how to adopt a consumption tax and to discuss what theory and evidence have told us and could tell us about these issues.
ER  -