TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hassett,Kevin A.
AU  - Mathur,Aparna
AU  - Metcalf,Gilbert E.
TI  - The Incidence of a U.S. Carbon Tax: A Lifetime and Regional Analysis
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13554
PY  - 2007
Y2  - October 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13554
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13554.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Kevin Hassett
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
E-Mail: khassett@aei.org

Aparna Mathur
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
E-Mail: amathur@aei.org

Gilbert E. Metcalf
Room 3221
Department of the Treasury
Washington, DC 20220
1500 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Tel: 202-622-0173
E-Mail: gilbert.metcalf@tufts.edu
AB  - This paper measures the direct and indirect incidence of a carbon tax using current income and two measures of lifetime income to rank households.  Our results suggest that carbon taxes are more regressive when annual income is used as a measure of economic welfare than when proxies for lifetime income are used.  

Further, the direct component of the tax, in any given year, is significantly more regressive than the indirect component. In fact, for 1987, the indirect component of the tax is mildly progressive.  We observe a modest shift over time with the direct component of carbon taxes becoming less regressive and the indirect component becoming more regressive.  These effects mostly offset each other and the distribution of the total tax burden has not changed much over time.  

In addition we find that regional variation has fluctuated over the years of our anlaysis.  By 2003 there is little systematic variation in carbon tax burdens across regions of the country.
ER  -