Excise tax avoidance: The case of state cigarette taxes

Excise tax avoidance: the case of state cigarette taxes.

We conduct an applied welfare economics analysis of cigarette tax avoidance. We develop an extension of the standard formula for the optimal Pigouvian corrective tax to incorporate the possibility that consumers avoid the tax by making purchases in nearby lower tax jurisdictions. To provide a key parameter for our formula, we estimate a structural endogenous switching regression model of border...

Tax incidence when individuals are time-inconsistent: the case of cigarette excise taxes

One of the most cogent criticisms of excise taxes is their regressivity, with lower income groups spending a much larger share of their income on goods such as cigarettes than do higher income groups. We argue that traditional quantity-based measures of incidence are only appropriate under a very restrictive ‘‘time-consistent’’ model of consumption of sin goods. A model that is much more consis...

The case for increasing North Carolina's cigarette excise tax.

The effects of excise taxes and regulations on cigarette smoking.

We estimate a generalized linear model to examine adult and teenage cigarette demand. Out analysis focuses on the extent to which excise taxes and regulations restricting smoking in public places affect cigarette consumption. The adult results indicate that the price elasticity of demand is unstable over time, ranging from 0.06 in 1970 to -0.23 in 1985. These estimates are lower than most found...

Excise Taxes, Consumer Demand, Over-Shifting, and Tax Revenue