Bulletin de veille du 25 octobre 2022
Québec/Canada
Le DPB prévoit que le ratio de la dette fédérale au PIB continuera de baisser par rapport au pic atteint en 2020-2021 pour revenir graduellement à 36,2 % en 2027-2028, mais qu’il restera supérieur à ce qu’il était avant la pandémie. Il prévoit également que le ratio du service de la dette atteindra 11,5 % en 2024-2025, avant de redescendre graduellement à 10,9 % en 2027-2028.
Consulter le document »
Ce rapport présente une projection de référence pour aider les parlementaires à évaluer les résultats économiques et financiers possibles dans le cadre des politiques actuelles.
Le DPB prévoit que le supplément unique au programme d’allocation pour le logement mesure ajoutera 940 millions de dollars aux dépenses fédérales en 2022-2023 et le nombre estimatif des bénéficiaires est de 1,7 million.
La partie 2 du projet de loi C-31 édictera la Loi sur la prestation pour logement locatif. Ce texte prévoit la création d’une prestation unique de 500 $ à l’intention des locataires canadiens à faible revenu. Si cette loi est adoptée, les personnes ayant consacré au moins 30 % de leur revenu à leur loyer en 2022 et dont le revenu est inférieur à 20 000 $ (ou 35 000 $ dans le cas d’une famille) seront admissibles à une prestation unique non imposable de 500 $ pour logement locatif. Un seul époux ou conjoint de fait visé pourra recevoir la prestation. Le loyer versé à un membre de la parenté ne sera pas admissible. Cette mesure ajoutera 940 millions de dollars aux dépenses fédérales en 2022-2023 et le nombre estimatif des bénéficiaires est de 1,7 million. Le DPB estime que la prestation pour logement proposée dans le budget de 2022 coûterait environ 940 millions de dollars.
Selon les auteurs, l’opinion largement répandue selon laquelle les augmentations des dépenses de programme financées par la dette n’entraînent aucun coût budgétaire, ou seulement un coût faible, peut s’avérer trompeuse. Leurs calculs indiquent que les impôts supplémentaires nécessaires pour stabiliser les ratios d’endettement peuvent dépasser les augmentations de dépenses financées par le déficit.
Consulter le document »
Proponents focus on the average fiscal cost of program spending when the interest rate on government debt is less than the economy’s growth rate. They ignore the potentially large marginal fiscal cost of deficit-financed increases in spending that arise when a higher public debt increases interest rates on government debt and lowers growth rates.
Les auteurs recommandent de combler les écarts en matière de prestations de maternité et de prestations parentales à l’échelle du Canada puisqu’il existe une nette disparité entre la couverture et la générosité des prestations du Québec, qui a son propre régime, et celles du reste du pays, qui dépendent du régime d’assurance-emploi. Ottawa devrait profiter de la réforme de l’AE pour corriger la situation, notamment en incitant les pères à prendre des congés parentaux et en offrant aux parents non admissibles un soutien du revenu pendant la première année de vie de l’enfant.
Consulter le document »
Le Canada est sur le point de faire un grand pas en avant en matière de garde d’enfants avec le déploiement d’un système pancanadien d’apprentissage et de garde des jeunes enfants qui promet de réduire les frais de garde d’ici la fin de 2022 et de parvenir à des frais de 10 dollars par jour d’ici 2026. Alors que les gouvernements fédéral, provinciaux et territoriaux élaborent des plans de mise en œuvre, il convient d’évaluer les progrès réalisés sur les indicateurs d’abordabilité, d’accessibilité et de qualité des services de garde au cours des 30 dernières années.
La comparaison des données des années 1980 et 1990 avec celles de 2019 montre des progrès significatifs dans de nombreux domaines. Cependant, les frais de garde ont continué d’augmenter au fil du temps et les progrès dans les provinces et territoires sont mitigés en ce qui concerne le ratio personnel-enfants, les salaires des éducatrices de la petite enfance et le financement pour les familles à faible revenu.
L’obtention de services de garde d’enfants à 10 dollars par jour dans tout le Canada doit se faire conjointement avec les mesures énoncées dans les recommandations, pour combler les pénuries de places et réussir le recrutement et la rétention de suffisamment d’éducatrices. Il n’est pas certain que les fonds alloués seront suffisants pour amener les frais à 10 dollars par jour dans les provinces où les coûts sont élevés, comme la Colombie-Britannique, l’Alberta et l’Ontario. De plus, alors que le gouvernement fédéral envisage de modifier le programme d’assurance-emploi, il devrait se rappeler l’importance de soutenir les parents présentement inadmissibles aux prestations de soins parentaux.
La décision de prendre ou de retarder sa retraite est multidimensionnelle, et il y a peu d’indications que des mesures fiscales seules pourront renverser la tendance.
Consulter le document »
Retenir un peu plus longtemps les Québécois qui approchent la retraite et faire revenir ceux qui ont déjà fait le saut : voilà certaines des pistes de solution mises de l’avant par les entreprises et les gouvernements pour faire face aux pénuries de main-d’œuvre qui sévissent un peu partout au Québec. Mais tout comme l’immigration ou l’automatisation, le recours aux travailleurs plus âgés n’est pas une solution magique. Afin de traverser la prochaine décennie, qui comptera plus de départs à la retraite que de jeunes entamant leur carrière, c’est une multitude de mesures qu’il faudra mettre en place. Et pour qu’elles soient efficaces, il est essentiel d’évaluer correctement le potentiel de chacune et d’identifier les défis à sa mise en œuvre.
L’objectif d’allonger la carrière d’un plus grand nombre de Québécois mène à deux constats:
- Le nombre de travailleurs susceptibles d’être retenus sur le marché du travail ou convaincus d’y retourner va diminuer au cours des prochaines années;
- Il est très difficile de convaincre des travailleurs de revenir travailler.
Cette étude vise à déterminer si les différences dans la taille de la population influencent les résultats fiscaux des gouvernements infranationaux.
The largest Canadian provinces and US states are roughly 80 times bigger than their least populous counterparts. Using almost three decades of data, this study examines the data from these subnational governments to see whether these differences in population are related to the fiscal outcomes like the size of government, government debt and annual surpluses and deficits, reliance on consumption rather than income taxes, and the progressivity of personal income-tax system.
L’auteurs s’intéresse aux effets budgétaires de la pandémie au Canada et constate que les deux paliers de gouvernement ont vu leurs recettes diminuer au début de la pandémie, puis se redresser, les provinces se redressant plus rapidement en partie grâce aux transferts fournis par le gouvernement fédéral. Les deux paliers ont également vu leurs dépenses augmenter, ce qui a entraîné une hausse des déficits et de la dette. Cependant, collectivement, les effets sur les provinces du Canada ont été plus modestes, produisant des ratios de déficit et de dette par rapport au PIB plus faibles que ceux du gouvernement fédéral.
The COVID-19 pandemic created enormous economic and fiscal disruption in both Canada and around the world. As revenues dropped and pandemic-related spending soared, governments incurred large deficits. Globally, the IMF has estimated that in 2020 world governments ran a negative general government fiscal balance of 10.2%. This was forecast to decline to 7.9% in 2021 and 5.2% in 2022. Canada did not escape this fiscal impact of the pandemic. According to the IMF, Canada saw a negative fiscal balance of 10.9% in 2020 with a forecast 7.5% in 2021 and 2.2% in 2022. However, the pandemic affected the public finances of the federal and provincial governments differently.
Selon l’auteur, le gouvernement canadien, comme plusieurs autres pays, compte taxer davantage les entreprises numériques pour combler le déséquilibre budgétaire, ce qui pourrait être couteux pour les Canadiens.
Le projet de surtaxe sur les revenus des entreprises numériques du gouvernement fédéral nuirait aux consommateurs canadiens selon cette note de l’IEDM. « Peu importe le nombre de couches de maquillage que le gouvernement mettra sur son projet de taxe numérique, ce sont les consommateurs canadiens qui vont encore payer pour », dit Olivier Rancourt, économiste à l’IEDM et auteur de la publication.
États-Unis
Selon les auteurs, le Congrès des États-Unis et l’administration Biden sont maintenant confrontés à un choix difficile : étendre le crédit d’impôt pour enfants ou laisser s’évaporer tous les progrès réalisés contre la pauvreté des enfants au cours des deux dernières années.
The Child Tax Credit expansion drove child poverty sharply downward in 2021. Combined with other relief efforts, the expansion helped lower child poverty by more than 40 percent between 2020 and 2021, reaching a record low of 5.2 percent, Census Bureau data released last week show. The credit’s expansion expired at the end of last year, but policymakers can renew this successful poverty-fighting policy in year-end bipartisan tax legislation.
There is pressure on Congress from business interests to delay a corporate tax increase; Congress should not consider any business tax breaks without also expanding the Child Tax Credit
Aux États-Unis, la concentration extrême des richesses crée des inégalités raciales importantes. Pour redistribuer cette richesse, l’Institut On Taxation and Economic Policy propose d’imposer les gains latents, ce qui pourrait limiter la perpétuelle inégalité.
DC has an outsized concentration of extreme wealth relative to its overall population, according to a new report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). DC makes up 0.2 percent of the country’s population but has 0.5 percent of the nation’s extreme wealth – which the report defines as net worth over $30 million. Just 0.4 percent of DC tax units (roughly 1,500 households based on the number of tax filers in 2019) have net worth over $30 million, and these same tax units hold nearly half (46 percent) of all wealth in the District.
La concentration majeure de la richesse dans les mains d’une minorité est une problématique grandissante aux États-Unis. Pour les ménages accumulant des richesses de plus de 30 millions de dollars, 43% de celle-ci est retrouvée sous forme de gain en capital non réalisé. Une taxe de 2% sur la richesse excédent 30 millions aurait pu générer 415 milliards de revenu, tout en affectant seulement 0,25% de la population américaine.
Economic inequality in the U.S. is large, growing and highly unpopular.1 Excessive concentration of wealth runs counter to our national aspiration for genuine equality of opportunity, and it saps the vitality of our democracy through the consolidation of power and influence. Tax policy offers a powerful means of beginning to address our nation’s stark level of inequality, but current law is clearly falling short of its potential. Federal and state tax codes include little in the way of direct taxes on the wealth holdings of extremely affluent families and instead often favor sources of income that are derived from wealth. In recent years an increasing amount of attention has been paid to issues of economic and wealth inequality, including analyses of national wealth inequality over time and by race and ethnicity.2 This report adds to that discussion by offering a look at geographic distribution of extreme wealth in the U.S. It includes estimates of the amount of wealth in excess of $30 million and $1 billion per household in each state as well as data on unrealized capital gains in excess of $10 million per household.
L’auteur analyse l’impact des mesures fiscales des gouvernements des États américains sur les mouvements migratoires interétatiques aux États-Unis. Les données illustrent que les particuliers et les entreprises favorisent les États dotés de taxes faibles et d’un système fiscal simple, tels que la Floride, la Caroline du Sud et l’Idaho.
Every year, millions of Americans pack up and move from one state to another, providing unique insights into what people value when deciding where to live, work, and raise a family. For many years, policymakers, journalists, and taxpayers have debated the role state tax policy plays in individuals’ and businesses’ location decisions. Annual data about who is moving—and where—provide clues about the factors contributing to these moves.
Taxes are one such factor. The latest IRS and Census data show that people and businesses favor states with low and structurally sound tax systems, which can impact the state’s economic growth and governmental coffers.
Each year, the IRS releases migration data showing the movements of income taxpayers based on changes in their mailing address between filing one year’s income tax return and the next. The most recent data generally show location changes that occurred between when taxpayers filed their tax year 2018 returns in calendar year 2019 and when they filed their tax year 2019 returns in calendar year 2020. Notably, because the filing deadline in 2020 was extended by three months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the most recent data capture more moves than usual because many taxpayers went 15 months, rather than the typical 12, between filing returns for tax years 2018 and 2019.
These data, therefore, capture many of the interstate moves made early in the pandemic—between mid-March and mid-July 2020—but do not necessarily capture the bulk of pandemic-related moves, many of which occurred later in 2020 and even into 2021. As such, when interpreting these data, it is important to keep in mind that many of these moves happened before the even more pronounced shift away from large cities and high cost-of-living areas that occurred during the pandemic.
Non-governmental datasets, including from U-Haul and United Van Lines, have the advantage of being especially timely, shedding light on moves that occurred even more recently, but the IRS data are by default more comprehensive and provide important insights into the movement of adjusted gross income (AGI) among states.
La pandémie de COVID-19 a conduit de nombreux pays à adopter des modifications temporaires de leurs systèmes fiscaux. Confrontés à un manque à gagner dû à la récession, les pays devront réfléchir à la meilleure façon de structurer leurs systèmes fiscaux pour favoriser la reprise économique et augmenter les recettes.
The International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI) seeks to measure the extent to which a country’s tax system adheres to two important aspects of tax policy: competitiveness and neutrality.
A competitive tax code is one that keeps marginal tax rates low. In today’s globalized world, capital is highly mobile. Businesses can choose to invest in any number of countries throughout the world to find the highest rate of return. This means that businesses will look for countries with lower tax rates on investment to maximize their after-tax rate of return. If a country’s tax rate is too high, it will drive investment elsewhere, leading to slower economic growth. In addition, high marginal tax rates can impede domestic investment and lead to tax avoidance.
Aux États-Unis, l’élargissement du Child Tax Credit (CTC) a contribué de façon significative à la réduction de la pauvreté chez les enfants. Les auteurs ont toutefois constaté qu’un tel programme excluait certains contribuables et que les communautés plus affectées doivent être davantage prises en compte lors de l’élaboration de programmes semblable.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vast social and economic inequities in the US, which prompted unprecedented relief policies that, for one year, brought child poverty to its lowest levels in decades. However, as the economy enters a new phase of robust job growth, high inflation, and ongoing economic uncertainty about future COVID-19 outbreaks, outcomes for children living in poverty hang in the balance.
Le changement du mode de paiement du Child Tax Credit qui passe crédit d’impôt remboursable à un montant payable chaque mois a eu un impact positif sur les familles à faibles et moyens revenu américaines. Pour 81% des familles, il serait possible de prédire avec précision le montant auxquels elles auraient droit pour une année, permettant ainsi davantage de crédits payés sous forme d’une avance reçue par les familles à chaque mois.
Refundable tax credits provide benefits in excess of taxes owed and can play an important role in the financial lives of low-income families. For low-income families with children, the two refundable tax credits that provide the most support are the earned income tax credit (EITC) and the child tax credit (CTC). Families generally receive them as part of their tax refund, along with any other refund due, after filing a tax return.
Refundable tax credits differ from most programs that provide income support to low-income families in two significant ways: eligibility is determined on a calendar year basis and benefits are largely received as a single payment between February and May, after the year has ended and a tax return has been filed. Many benefit programs that operate outside the tax system consider periods that are much shorter when determining eligibility (and are not tied to the calendar year) and they typically pay benefits monthly
How well the IRS can accurately predict credits will be key to the success of advance payment programs. Advancing too much credit puts families at risk of having to repay the credits at tax time unless a robust “hold harmless” provision is put in place that would limit how much errantly advanced credit must be repaid. Advancing too little credit means families miss out on needed support.
International
Ce rapport du Conseil économique du Danemark traite notamment de la politique économique actuelle, des perspectives économiques et de finances publiques ainsi que de la soutenabilité budgétaire à long terme.
Chapter I contains comments on a range of current measures aimed at mitigating the consequences of high inflation, including lower electricity tax, a rent ceiling and a loan scheme for high energy bills. The chapter also comments on the green tax reform and on government departments’ assessment criteria for changes to corporate tax.
Chapter II presents a projection of the Danish economy. The projection indicates that there is not only the prospect of high inflation in 2022, but also in 2023, and that there is a prospect of a significant fall in employment. The planned fiscal policy for 2023 is assessed to be appropriate.
Chapter III presents an estimate of the long-term fiscal sustainability. The sustainability indicator is estimated to be 1.0 percent of GDP; therefore, fiscal policy is assessed to be sustainable.
Finally, Chapter IV contains an analysis of the teacher value-added in middle school. The analysis shows that a teacher who is among the best can significantly improve student results. The analysis indicates that a focus on
teacher quality is well-founded.
La hausse de l’inflation et des taux d’intérêt a supplanté plus d’une décennie d’inflation modérée et de taux d’intérêt bas dans de nombreux pays. Les arbitrages de politique budgétaire sont de plus en plus de plus en plus difficiles, en particulier pour les pays très endettés où les réponses à la pandémie de COVID-19 ont épuisé leur marge de manœuvre budgétaire.
Governments face increasingly difficult trade-offs in tackling the spikes in food and energy prices when policy buffers are largely exhausted after two years of pandemic. They should prioritize protecting vulnerable groups through targeted support while keeping a tight fiscal stance to help reduce inflation. Building fiscal buffers in normal times would allow governments to respond swiftly and flexibly during adversities. Several fiscal tools, such as job-retention schemes, have proven useful to preserve jobs and income for workers. Social safety nets should be made more readily scalable and better targeted, leveraging digital technologies. Exceptional support to firms should be reserved for severe situations and requires sound fiscal risk management.
Les pays doivent saisir l’occasion d’améliorer leurs cadres budgétaires à moyen terme lorsqu’ils reviennent aux règles d’encadrement budgétaires en vigueur avant la pandémie.
Governments face difficult policy trade-offs with record debt levels, tightening monetary policies, and urgent demands, including food and energy crises, the climate agenda, and population aging. Governments need to communicate fiscal plans to reduce debt sustainability risks and promote consistent macroeconomic policies. Many envisage a return to fiscal rules that had been suspended during the pandemic to strengthen credibility. This situation offers an opportunity to rethink fiscal rules and determine how governments can make fiscal policy more agile, including in responding to crises, without undermining fiscal sustainability. A risk-based medium-term fiscal framework that combines standards, rules, and strengthened institutions would strike a better balance between flexibility and credibility.
Le financement des programmes sociaux de l’Angleterre devrait prendre en compte les besoins régionaux afin d’être alloués de manière efficace et juste. Une certaine discrétion des élus locaux au niveau des taxes et des dépenses permettrait aux régions visées de mieux palier aux problèmes relatifs à une allocation centralisée des ressources.
In 2019–20, the last financial year before the COVID-19 pandemic, government spending that can be specifically attributed to England amounted to £541 billion or £9,650 per person. Of this, around £185 billion (£3,290 per person) was for social security benefits such as the state pension, universal credit and disability benefits. The remaining £356 billion (£6,320) was spent on a range of public services. This includes spending on health (£137 billion), education (£74 billion), transport (£28 billion), public order and safety (£26 billion), adult social care (£19 billion), and housing and community amenities (£10 billion) – services that are vital both directly and indirectly to the health, well-being and life chances of the population. Indeed, recent years have seen increasingly robust evidence emerge that the amount of funding such services receive matters particularly for the outcomes they deliver for people from more deprived backgrounds.
L’amnistie fiscale accordée par le gouvernement de l’Argentine depuis 2016 a permis de doubler la quantité d’actifs étrangers déclarés par les contribuables. Les impôts perçus sur ces actifs supplémentaires ont à leur tour fait augmenter les dépenses publiques, notamment en permettant de financer le régime de pension du pays et les aides en lien avec la COVID-19.
The paper studies the effectiveness of tax amnesties and their impacts on capital taxation and public spending. We leverage rich policy variation from Argentina, which implemented the world’s most successful program, reportedly revealing assets worth 21% of GDP. First, despite substantial offshore tax evasion, declared foreign assets quadrupled. Second, tax progressivity improved because disclosures were extensive among the wealthiest 0.1%. Third, improving tax compliance has sizable fiscal externalities on capital taxes and social transfers: the wealth and capital income tax bases more than doubled, and the earmarked revenue boosted pension benefits by 15%. We end by discussing the lessons from Argentina.
Les auteurs analysent les tendances récentes en matière d’adoption de règles budgétaires à tous les niveaux de gouvernement et évaluent empiriquement leurs effets dans le but de tirer des enseignements pour la période post-COVID-19.
Fiscal rules are increasingly used at state and local levels to promote fiscal sustainability in OECD countries. Following the Global Financial Crisis, multiple reforms to fiscal rule frameworks were made so that governments could better tackle crises and build buffers for future downturns. This paper examines recent trends in the adoption of fiscal rules across levels of government and empirically assesses their effects with the purpose of providing lessons for the post-COVID-19 period. Beyond addressing the deterioration in public finances after the pandemic, the challenges include addressing the impact of population ageing, climate change and the energy transition, as well as growing regional inequalities. Evolution of the rules employed at the central level are contrasted to those at the subnational levels, including design features and institutional elements, together with their goals and limitations.
Les auteurs s’intéressent au changement de direction qu’a pris le nouveau Chancelier du Royaume-Uni quant à la politique fiscale du pays. Celle-ci a comme objectif de permettre à la Banque d’Angleterre de ralentir l’escalade des taux d’intérêt et d’éviter à la Trésorerie des coupures de dépenses importantes.
The new Chancellor has rewritten UK economic policy in order to reduce the pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates and the Treasury to deliver spending cuts. He has now reversed 60 per cent of the tax cuts announced less than four weeks ago and committing to scale back support for energy bills after April 2023. Jeremy Hunt not only reversed the majority of the mini-Budget tax cuts, but also scrapped Rishi Sunak’s 1p cut to the basic rate of Income Tax. This alone saves almost £6 billion a year, and confirms this is a tax-raising rather than tax cutting Parliament.
U-turns since it was first announced have reduced the size of the mini-Budget tax cut next year for the typical household from £500 to £290, driven by the scrapping of the rise in National Insurance. For the richest 10 per cent of households, the change is dramatic with tax cuts reduced from £5,380 to £1,650. Taking the parliament as a whole, it is clear that taxes are rising, driven by the freeze on income tax thresholds. Taxes as a share of GDP are on course to rise to around 36 per cent by the end of the parliament – up from 33 per cent at the start and the highest sustained level since 1950-51.
The Chancellor has also said that the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) will now end next April, 18 months earlier than originally planned. This could save the Treasury up to £40 billion next year, at the price of allowing typical annual bills to rise to £4,000 next April Significant pressure is now on the Treasury review to come up with a more targeted – and cheaper – successor for the EPG.
These huge policy changes are intended to reduce the pressure on Bank of England to raise interest rates, thereby reducing the Government’s borrowing costs. If he is successful, it will mean that the Treasury will have to do less by way of public spending cuts in order to ensure that debt is falling in the medium term, the Government’s stated aim for the public finances. Nonetheless, the new Chancellor remains on track to announce public spending cuts in order of tens of billions of pounds when laying out the government’s medium-term fiscal plans on 31st October. With those spending cuts to find, and a new energy support package to be devised, many of Jeremy Hunt’s toughest choices still lie ahead.
Les auteurs proposent une réforme de la Petroleum Resource Rent Tax en Australie.
The present PRRT generates no revenue until the project sponsor gets back all their capital together with the permitted uplift factors. The problem with this approach is that no PRRT revenue is generated until many years later which might exceed the life of the project and/or outlast the high returns—the economic rent that should be taxed.
We suggest the PRRT be reformed so that any high return on funds employed will generate revenue irrespective of whether or not the project sponsor has recovered the investment, augmented by generous uplift factors. In the worked example above PRRT collection of $4.8 million per annum were provided for. These would add up to $48 million over a decade. However, in this specific example no PRRT would have been collected under present arrangements. This example used a relatively small project with a modest profit. But it can be appreciated that the amounts could be very significant for the many projects operating in Australia at the present time.
THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE. Mark Ogge, « War gains: LNG Windfall Profits 2022 », 19 octobre 2022, 4 p.
En Australie, les profits découlant du gaz liquéfié naturel ont doublé à cause du conflit entre la Russie et l’Ukraine. Une taxe sur ces profits permettrait le financement de plusieurs programmes sociaux du gouvernement australien.
Energy prices spiked worldwide following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting restrictions on Russia’s gas exports. This has in turn increased the value of Australian LNG exports and the profits of LNG companies. We estimate the war related windfall gain to LNG companies in 2021-22 at between $26 billion and $40 billion.
Despite widespread calls by economists and commentators to tax this windfall gain, the Australian Government is yet to do so. At least $20 billion could be raised by a tax on war related profits. This is enough to fund the Australian Government’s entire $20 billion investment in its Rewiring the Nation initiative to modernize Australia’s electricity grid and would leave funds to compensate Australian households and businesses unfairly impacted by spiralling energy costs, largely because of the behaviour of the LNG producers concerned
Les auteurs évaluent que les coûts fiscaux du regroupement en soi sont relativement modestes en Australie, mais en utilisant un modèle d’étude d’événement ils montrent que l’influence qui en découle sur les déclarations de revenus.
Australian taxpayers display reference-dependent preferences when filing their tax returns – they bunch at positive and salient thresholds. We develop a model of taxpayer behavior to show that bunching heterogeneity reflects both differences in preferences and the rate at which the marginal cost of reducing one’s tax liability increases. Consistent with this model, bunching has grown alongside electronically prepared returns over recent decades and the subsequent responses of tax agents. Taxpayers receiving these balances are more likely to stay with their tax agent, but do not pay higher fees. Consistent with having flatter cost curves, `high-bunching’ agents deliver larger balances more generally and do so by lifting deductions and lowering reported income for return items where audits are costly.
Équipe de rédaction
Recherche et sélection des articles :
- Frédéric Deschênes
- Tatiana Duval
- Alena Mulay-Benaissa
Coordination et édition :
- Tommy Gagné-Dubé