Excise taxes on smoking, drinking, gambling, polluting, and driving are always topical and controversial. Not only are these taxes convenient sources of government revenue, they can also be designed to reflect the external costs that consumers or producers of excisable products impose on other people. Global warming, acid rain, traffic congestion, and the economic costs of cigarette and alcohol consumption are problems that can be corrected through selective excise taxes and other regulatory instruments. Excise taxes, moreover, are increasingly looked upon as revenue substitutes for distortionary taxes on capital and labour. Addressing these and other issues, this book by internationally recognized experts analyses the art of excise taxation, providing a systematic, insightful, and often provocative treatment of a major fiscal instrument that policy-makers often neglect, and that gets little attention in the professional literature. It provides a sound understanding, not only of relevant economic theory, but of the myriad institutional details that are crucial for the practical application of that theory.

Tax law is political. This book highlights and explains the major themes and methodologies of a group of scholars who challenge the traditional claim that tax law is neutral and unbiased. The contributors to this volume include pioneers in the field of critical tax theory, as well as key thinkers who have sustained and expanded the investigation into why the tax laws are the way they are and what impacts tax laws have on historically disempowered groups. This volume, assembled by two law professors who work in the field, is an accessible introduction to this new and growing body of scholarship. It is a resource not only for scholars and students in the fields of taxation and economics, but also for those who engage with critical race theory, feminist legal theory, queer theory, class-based analysis, and social justice generally. Tax is the one area of law that affects everyone in our society, and this book is crucial to understanding its impact.

Optimal tax reform : transitional issues in implementing tax reform -- Implementing tax reform -- Optimal tax reform in the presence of adjustment costs -- Grandfather rules and the theory of optimal tax reform -- Consumption tax reform: changes in business equity and housing prices / (with John W. Diamond) -- Consumption taxation -- Should capital income be subject to consumption-based taxation? -- A hybrid consumption-based direct tax proposed for Bolivia / (with Charles E. McLure, Jr.) -- U.S. Supreme Court unanimously chooses substance over form in foreign tax credit case : implications of the PPL decision for the creditability of cash-flow taxes / (with Charles E. McLure, Jr. and Jack Mintz) -- Taxation, uncertainty and the choice of a consumption tax base -- Optimal commodity taxation of traditional and electronic commerce income tax reform -- Treasury I and the Tax Reform Act of 1986 : the economics and politics of tax reform / (with Charles E. McLure, Jr.) -- The windfall recapture tax : issues of theory and design -- Balancing act: weighing the factors affecting the taxation of capital income in a small open economy / (with Margaret McKeehan) -- State and local tax policy -- Revenue options for the state of texas -- The new view of the property tax : a reformulation / (with Peter Mieszkowski) -- The property tax as a capital tax : a room with three views -- Intrajurisdictional capitalization and the incidence of the property tax -- Tax competition -- Pigou, Tiebout, property taxation and the under-provision of local public goods / (with Peter Mieszkowski) -- Capital mobility and capital tax competition -- Tax competition and the efficiency of "benefit-related" business taxes / (with Elisabeth Gugl).

The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics presents a unified conceptual framework for analyzing taxation--the first to be systematically developed in several decades. An original treatment of the subject rather than a textbook synthesis, the book contains new analysis that generates novel results, including some that overturn long-standing conventional wisdom. This fresh approach should change thinking, research, and teaching for decades to come. Building on the work of James Mirrlees, Anthony Atkinson and Joseph Stiglitz, and subsequent researchers, and in the spirit of classics by A. C. Pigou, William Vickrey, and Richard Musgrave, this book steps back from particular lines of inquiry to consider the field as a whole, including the relationships among different fiscal instruments. Louis Kaplow puts forward a framework that makes it possible to rigorously examine both distributive and distortionary effects of particular policies despite their complex interactions with others. To do so, various reforms--ranging from commodity or estate and gift taxation to regulation and public goods provision--are combined with a distributively offsetting adjustment to the income tax. The resulting distribution-neutral reform package holds much constant while leaving in play the distinctive effects of the policy instrument under consideration. By applying this common methodology to disparate subjects, The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics produces significant cross-fertilization and yields solutions to previously intractable problems.