Toward Fundamental Tax Reform

Tax experts across the political spectrum agree that the current rate structure is not rational and that potential gains from reform could be remarkable. Accordingly, tax reform is widely viewed as desirable. However, there is not a clear consensus on what reforms are most desirable or feasible. In Toward Fundamental Tax Reform, eleven leading tax scholars, including a Nobel Prize winner, outline their ideas about tax reform. The original essays provide readers with concise but varying perspectives on the possibilities of tax reform. They also focus attention on key questions in the scholarly debate: Would a different tax code dramatically alter the functioning of the economy? How much damage does the current law do? Can relatively small changes to the tax code deliver most of the benefits of more dramatic reforms like the flat tax? Are political forces that oppose efficient tax systems simply too powerful to overcome? Will tax reform inevitably harm the poor? Can a tax reform, if enacted, be sustained?

Papers presented at a conference held at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, in Apr. 2006.

The tax system profoundly affects countless aspects of private behavior. It is a powerful policy influence on the distribution of income and it is the one aspect of government that almost every citizen cannot avoid. With tax reform high on the political agenda, this book brings together studies of leading tax economists and lawyers to assess the various reform proposals and examine the effects of tax reform in several distinct areas. Together, these studies and comments on them present a balanced evaluation of professional opinion on the issues that will be critical in the tax reform debate. The book addresses annual and lifetime distributional effects, saving, investment, transitional problems, simplification, home ownership and housing prices, charitable groups, international taxation, financial intermediaries and insurance, labor supply, and health insurance. In addition to Henry Aaron and William Gale, the contributors include Alan Auerbach, University of California, Berkeley; David Bradford, Princeton University; Charles Clotfelter, Duke University; Eric Engen, Federal Reserve; Don Fullerton, University of Texas; Jon Gruber, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Patric Hendershott, Ohio State; David Ling, University of Florida; Ronald Perlman, Covington & Burling; Diane Lim Rogers, Congressional Budget Office; John Karl Scholz, University of Wisconsin; Joel Slemrod, University of Michigan; and Robert Triest, University of California, Davis.

Transition costs surround debates over fundamental tax reform. Calculations of transition costs have followed the setup pioneered by Alan Auerbach and Larry Kotlikoff. In this volume, the authors focus on the most critical transition issues from the political perspective.

David F. Bradford discusses key concepts in consumption and income taxes and identifies the problems of a transition to a consumption-based system. He addresses how such a transition would affect interest rates and shows how price changes would alter the distribution of gains and losses.

Tax reform debates in the United States have for some time been dominated by the question of whether the existing corporate and individual income tax system should be replaced with some form of a national consumption tax. This book contains essays by a group of internationally recognized tax experts who describe the current state of the art in economic thinking on the issue of whether fundamental tax reform is preferable to continued incremental reform of the existing income tax. The collection covers a wide range of tax policy issues related to consumption tax reforms, including their economic effects, distributional consequences, effects on administrative and compliance costs, transitional issues and the political aspects of fundamental tax reform, and international comparisons.

The 1987 tax reform package considered.

Who should pay taxes, how should they be collected, and how do they affect the economy? Should the income tax be tinkered with, replaced with a flat tax, or left alone? Cutting through the academic jargon and self-serving Washington-speak, Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija bring together all of the data, analytical insight, and related material bearing on tax reform to explore the fundamental questions and choices inherent in tax policymaking. They review the key elements of fundamental tax reform proposals, including a single rate, a clean base, and a consumption base. Then they take a detailed look at the major alternatives for tax reform, providing concise guidelines that will make clear the choices involved in tax policy.