Paying for Public Spending: Is There a Role for Earmarked Taxes?
نویسنده
چکیده
Tax earmarking, or hypothecation, refers to the assigning of receipts either from a single tax base, or as a proportion from a wider pool of revenue, to a specific end use; it contrasts with general fund financing of expenditure from consolidated receipts. The idea has been seized on both by those who want to defend the public sector who think it would make taxation popular and by those who want to cut public spending who expect the opposite effect. Earmarking may be applied in a strong or substantive sense, or in a weak or nominal sense. In the strong case, revenue determines expenditure, or at least revenue must match expenditure, and there may be associated referendums on the amount of spending and the tax rate. In the weak case, earmarking is purely formal — undertaken to make the system more transparent and to inform the taxpayer of the cost of a service. Earmarking may also be wide, covering a whole spending programme, or narrow, for a specific project within a programme. The principal example of earmarking (nominal) in the UK today is National Insurance contributions (NICs) which go to the National Insurance Fund out of which contributory benefits are paid. This paper considers the range of support for earmarked taxes, examines the issues, and asks if there is a role for such taxes in the British system.
منابع مشابه
واکنش کشش های بلندمدت و کوتاهمدت پایههای مالیاتی به ادوار تجاری در ایران
In recent years, with increasing of international sanctions and oil revenues falling in Iran, more attention has paid to public spending and taxes as a source of government financing. In this regard, numerous studies have focused on the issue of taxation and its role in economic development. However, the most studies in Iran analyses the role of taxes on macroeconomic variables such as economic...
متن کاملEarmarked Revenues and Spending Volatility: The Case of Highway Finance
® The contents of this report reflect the views of the authors, who are responsible for the facts and the accuracy of the information presented herein. This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the Department of Transportation University Transportation Centers Program, in the interest of information exchange. Abstract Over the last decade, state governments have experienced two rec...
متن کاملRoad Taxes, Road User Charges and Earmarking
The UK Road Fund was set up in 1921 and financed by earmarked taxes, but was unsuccessful as a form of road finance and abandoned in 1937. The paper examines why earmarking failed and what problems arise for replacing road taxes by hypothecated road charges. These charges would need to be regulated and could evolve into a more efficient system of road pricing. The paper claims that recent exper...
متن کاملTax Earmarking and Grass-roots Accountability
We ask whether tax earmarking can foster accountability in public provision of goods and services when consumers can privately monitor provision. We show that earmarking can raise the stakes that consumers have in monitoring public provision independently of how taxes are earmarked, because it introduces a more direct linkage between monitoring and taxes paid.
متن کامل