Identical Twins? Destination-Based Cash-Flow Taxes Versus Consumption Taxes with Payroll Subsidies

Author/Editor:

Benjamin Carton ; Emilio Fernández Corugedo ; Benjamin L Hunt

Publication Date:

December 14, 2017

Electronic Access:

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Disclaimer: IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

Summary:

The Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF) is a multi-region, forward-looking, DSGE model developed by the Economic Modeling Division of the IMF for policy analysis and international economic research. This paper uses GIMF to illustrate when a destination-based cash-flow tax is equivalent to a combination of a consumption tax and a labor subsidy, as the latter combination have been advocated as proxies for the implementation of destination-based cash-flow taxes. The paper documents the conditions under which both types of taxes are identical and how the equivalence in terms of the real economy and tax revenue responses can be broken, namely after the introduction of finitely lived consumers that value government debt as net wealth (real economy) and the introduction of untaxed government expenditure (tax revenue).

Series:

Working Paper No. 2017/276

Subject:

English

Publication Date:

December 14, 2017

ISBN/ISSN:

9781484332993/1018-5941

Stock No:

WPIEA2017276

Pages:

37

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