TY  - JOUR
AU  - Poterba,James M.
TI  - Lifetime Incidence and the Distributional Burden of Excise Taxes
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 2833
PY  - 1989
Y2  - July 1989
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2833
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2833.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James M. Poterba
Department of Economics
MIT, E52-350
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA  02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-6673
Fax: 617/258-7804
E-Mail: poterba@nber.org
AB  - This implies that low-income households in one year have some chance of being higher-income households in other years, and significantly affects the estimated distributional burden of excise taxes. This paper shows that household expenditures on gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco as a share of total consumption (a proxy for lifetime income) are much more equally distributed than expenditures as a share of annual income. From a longer-horizon perspective, excise taxes on these goods are therefore much less regressive than standard analyses suggest.
ER  -