Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2006
Abstract
The current debate in the United States about whether the income tax should be replaced with a consumption tax has been waged on the traditional grounds for evaluating tax policy: efficiency, equity, and administrability. For example, Joseph Bankman and David Weisbach recently argued for the superiority of an ideal consumption tax over an ideal income tax on three grounds: First, that the consumption tax is more efficient because it does not discriminate between current and future consumption,' while both income and consumption taxes have identical effect on work effort. Second, that the consumption tax is at least as good at redistribution as the income tax, and thus can equally satisfy vertical equity.2 Third, that the consumption tax is easier to administer than the income tax because it makes no attempt to tax income from capital and thus can omit many of the vexing complications that arise from such an attempt, like accounting for basis.3
Recommended Citation
Avi-Yonah, Reuven S. "The Three Goals of Taxation." Tax L. Rev. 60, no. 1 (2006): 1-28.
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