Tariffs, Optimal Taxes, and Collection Costs

This paper studies an optimal tax problem for a small open economy where collecting taxes is costly. It is shown that, in the presence of collection costs modeled as an increasing function of the tax rate: (a) the standard rules of optimal commodity taxation (the Ramsey, the inverse elasticity, the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Mihaljek, Dubravko
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. International Monetary Fund 1992
Series:IMF Working Papers
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: International Monetary Fund - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Description
Summary:This paper studies an optimal tax problem for a small open economy where collecting taxes is costly. It is shown that, in the presence of collection costs modeled as an increasing function of the tax rate: (a) the standard rules of optimal commodity taxation (the Ramsey, the inverse elasticity, the Corlett-Hague rules) may no longer be valid; (b) tariffs may replace domestic taxes as a second-best revenue-raising device; and (c) the optimal tariff/tax structure may be uniform rather than differentiated
Physical Description:34 pages
ISBN:9781451844573