Feb

13

Tax Cuts in the Age

February 13, 2008 | 5 Comments | Joshua Gans

I have a short piece in The Age today [over the fold] on inflation and tax cuts.

Tax Cuts: What the Experts Say

Joshua Gans, The Age, 13th February, 2008.

The prospect of lower income taxes can fuel inflation especially when they are expected to stay that way. In this environment, to shift the weight off monetary policy in fighting inflation, the government does have other fiscal levers it can pull. It can reduce expenditures but this may disproportionately hurt the poor. More alluringly it could have a temporary rise in the GST. This would impact on consumption immediately as consumers delayed unnecessary expenditures. By doing this, the government can potentially offset income tax reductions whose impact is muted by savings behaviour. Thus, the pain of higher taxes is short and widespread but the impact in reigning in aggregate demand is stronger.

Even beyond the traditional macroeconomic instruments, consider the opportunities here to enact environmental policies that raise costs of dirty consumption goods. Right at this moment these would have a dual impact of fighting over-heating wherever it is occurring – the economy and the environment.


Comments

5 Responses to “Tax Cuts in the Age”

  1. Ian on February 13th, 2008 9:07 pm

    Ahhh an argument for raising taxes just what we need. Perhaps we could consider what Mankiw says about the effect of higher taxes.

    http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/02/are-taxes-really-distortionary.html

    Why don’t we get the government to setup a tax system that doesn’t distort incentives, allows rewards for creating wealth and doesn’t create burdens for future generations to carry. Fighting inflation can then be left to the reserve bank and monetary policy while the government fixes the things the reserve bank can’t.

    On suggestion might be to get rid of those taxes that the states didn’t when they got GST, removing the payroll tax and stopping punishing companies for creating jobs might be a good one.

  2. CoreEcon » Blog Archive » Taxation options on February 14th, 2008 6:26 am

    [...] up from my Age piece yesterday, Nick Gruen — who was also there — notes that I wasn’t asked to consider the [...]

  3. Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily on February 19th, 2008 2:14 pm

    [...] Gans suggests a temporary increase in the GST as a measure against inflation (fat [...]

  4. Club Troppo » Thoughts of a couple of suspects on February 19th, 2008 2:15 pm

    [...] cuts. I wasn’t going to bother posting my piece, as it’s just a bit of a rehash – but Joshua has suggested some quite different ideas that are well worth mentioning (though they’re all pretty much unimplementable I suspect – at [...]

  5. CoreEcon » Blog Archive » Fiscal stimulus on November 25th, 2008 7:07 am

    [...] the goods whose purchases are being deferred. So it would hit all the right places. Indeed, I suggested the reverse earlier this year when our worry was [...]