The incidence and effects of taxation: some theoretical aspects

This treatment broadens the examination of the incidence and effects of taxation to include expenditure as well as payment considerations, whenever the expenditure of revenue from a tax is clearly a function of its collection. This recognition of the influence of public expenditure rests ultimately upon the supply-demand analysis by which the incidence of a tax is usually determined. A tax that cannot be shifted is found to burden all investments ultimately, irrespective of whether it is levied on all investments or only on some. The capitalization of such a tax depends on the influence of the reduced return on saving and hence on the volume of investment. The effects of a tax may be manifested through its payment, or through expenditure of the resulting revenue, either or both. The payment of a tax may, through the resulting outcome on price, cause less of a given commodity to be consumed, and less to be produced. The expenditure of revenue attached to the collection of a given tax may have effects as various as the uses a government chooses to make of such means.