Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Tax incidence
Summary
In economics, tax incidence or tax burden is the effect of a particular tax on the distribution of economic welfare. Economists distinguish between the entities who ultimately bear the tax burden and those on whom the tax is initially imposed. The tax burden measures the true economic effect of the tax, measured by the difference between real incomes or utilities before and after imposing the tax, and taking into account how the tax causes prices to change. For example, if a 10% tax is imposed on sellers of butter, but the market price rises 8% as a result, most of the tax burden is on buyers, not sellers. The concept of tax incidence was initially brought to economists' attention by the French Physiocrats, in particular François Quesnay, who argued that the incidence of all taxation falls ultimately on landowners and is at the expense of land rent. Tax incidence is said to "fall" upon the group that ultimately bears the burden of, or ultimately suffers a loss from, the tax. The key concept of tax incidence (as opposed to the magnitude of the tax) is that the tax incidence or tax burden does not depend on where the revenue is collected, but on the price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply. As a general policy matter, the tax incidence should not violate the principles of a desirable tax system, especially fairness and transparency.
The concept of tax incidence is used in political science and sociology to analyze the level of resources extracted from each income social stratum in order to describe how the tax burden is distributed among social classes. That allows one to derive some inferences about the progressive nature of the tax system, according to principles of vertical equity.
The theory of tax incidence has a number of practical results. For example, United States Social Security payroll taxes are paid half by the employee and half by the employer. However, some economists think that the worker bears almost the entire burden of the tax because the employer passes the tax on in the form of lower wages.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Ontological neighbourhood
Related courses (3)
MGT-454: Principles of microeconomics
The course allows students to get familiarized with the basic tools and concepts of modern microeconomic analysis. Based on graphical reasoning and analytical calculus, it constantly links to real eco
FIN-406: Macrofinance
This course provides students with a working knowledge of macroeconomic models that explicitly incorporate financial markets. The goal is to develop a broad and analytical framework for analyzing the
HUM-471: Economic growth and sustainability I
This course examines growth from various angles: economic growth, growth in the use of resources, need for growth, limits to growth, sustainable growth, and, if time permits, population growth and gro
Related publications (23)
Related people (5)
Related units (1)
Related concepts (16)
Excess burden of taxation
In economics, the excess burden of taxation, also known as the deadweight cost or deadweight loss of taxation, is one of the economic losses that society suffers as the result of taxes or subsidies. Economic theory posits that distortions change the amount and type of economic behavior from that which would occur in a free market without the tax. Excess burdens can be measured using the average cost of funds or the marginal cost of funds (MCF). Excess burdens were first discussed by Adam Smith.
Price elasticity of supply
The price elasticity of supply (PES or Es) is a measure used in economics to show the responsiveness, or elasticity, of the quantity supplied of a good or service to a change in its price. Price elasticity of supply, in application, is the percentage change of the quantity supplied resulting from a 1% change in price. Alternatively, PES is the percentage change in the quantity supplied divided by the percentage change in price. When PES is less than one, the supply of the good can be described as inelastic.
Tax
A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to collectively fund government spending, public expenditures, or as a way to regulate and reduce negative externalities. Tax compliance refers to policy actions and individual behaviour aimed at ensuring that taxpayers are paying the right amount of tax at the right time and securing the correct tax allowances and tax reliefs.