Abstract
This paper identifies conditions under which, starting from any tax-distorting equilibrium, destination- and origin-based indirect tax-harmonizing reforms are potentially Pareto improving in the presence of global public goods. The first condition (unrequited transfers between governments) requires that transfers are designed in such a way that the marginal valuations of the global public goods are equalized, whereas the second (conditional revenue changes) requires that the change in global tax revenues, as a consequence of tax harmonization, is consistent with the under/over-provision of global public goods relative to the (modified) Samuelson rule. Under these conditions, tax harmonization results in redistributing the gains from a reduction in global deadweight loss and any changes in global tax revenues according to the Pareto principle. And this is the case independently of the tax principle in place (destination or origin). © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 29-49 |
Journal | International Tax and Public Finance |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2014 |
Keywords
- Destination principle
- Global/local public goods
- Indirect tax harmonization
- Origin principle
- Reform of commodity taxes