The COVID-19 state sales tax windfall.

Policymakers were surprised to find increases in sales tax revenues in 2020 due to expectations that they would drop 8-20%. We investigate this puzzle and provide novel insights into consumption taxes based on this experience. Using a case study from the State of Utah, we document that shifts in the structure of consumption played a significant role in the robustness of sales tax revenue. Two factors stand out in our results. The first factor is the structure of the tax base for sales taxes in the USA. This tax base covers only a subset of personal consumption, excluding, for example, many services. During the pandemic, when services were restricted or shut down, this caused a shift in spending toward goods that are more likely to be in the sales tax base. The second factor is the boom in e-commerce during the pandemic, which boosted sales tax collections. This was catalyzed by recent legal changes that made the collection of sales taxes in e-commerce easier. Interestingly, this e-commerce boost also shifted the point of sale and related sales tax revenues away from urban areas toward suburban areas. Our case study of the pandemic's effect on sales taxes in the USA generally, and Utah's experience specifically, provides lessons for consumption taxes, such as the VAT more broadly, and lessons on the role of consumption taxes for tax revenue volatility.

Effects of intergovernmental revenue on local government draw on fiscal reserves: evidence from COVID-19 fiscal stress

This study investigates the effects of receipt and anticipation of intergovernmental revenues on local governments draw on accumulated fiscal reserves to cushion the impacts of COVID-19-related fiscal stress. Several studies have been conducted on determinants of fiscal reserves accumulation. However, little is known about the determinants of government draw on fiscal reserves, beyond revenue shortfall, in times of fiscal stress. Dwelling on the premise that government's draw on fiscal reserves is influenced by factors beyond revenue shortfall and controlling for the effects of revenue shortfalls and other factors, we analysed local government survey data to determine the effects of intergovernmental revenue on government draw on fiscal reserves. Results show that draw on fiscal reserves is significantly constrained by percent of FY 2020 revenue received from federal and state governments, but significantly and positively inluenced by revenue losses and percent of FY 2021 revenue anticipated from federal government.

A Study on Effect of Coronavirus Outbreak on India's Goods and Service Tax Revenue: An Analysis

The Coronavirus Outbreak is on a seeming drop in India, the effect of the epidemic on the economy is still mounting, as fresh waves of COVID-19 contagion are nodding nearby. Any projected-on income influence, thus, might be allowed meanwhile inadequacy and restrictions. Yet, as per GDP statistics of the previous two quarters it currently exists, and as per Goods and service tax illustrates the positive indication of regaining amongst all return's channels. The study emphasizes the problem of reimbursement to states in the case of a revenue deficit protected in the existing rule, and the states In India will have to experience the revenue deficit, which may be helped in the evaluation of goods and service tax. The study subsidizes the current discussion on Goods and Service tax compensation provisions of states by allocating another set of budgets for the financial year 2021. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Investing in the Prevention of Communicable Disease Outbreaks: Fiscal Health Modelling-The Tool of Choice for Assessing Public Finance Sustainability.

National strategies for preparedness for future outbreaks of COVID-19 often include timely preparedness with vaccines. Fiscal health modelling (FHM) has recently been brought forward as an additional analysis by defining the public economic impact from a governmental perspective. As governments are the main decision-makers concerning pandemic preparedness, this study aimed to develop an FHM framework for infectious diseases in the Netherlands. Based on the Dutch COVID-19 outbreak of 2020 and 2021 and publicly available data on tax income and gross domestic product (GDP), the fiscal impact of COVID-19 was assessed using two approaches. Approach I: Prospective modelling of future fiscal impact based on publicly available laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases; and Approach II: Retrospective assessment of the extrapolated tax and benefit income and GDP. Approach I estimated the consequences that can be causally linked to the population counts reducing income taxes by EUR 266 million. The total fiscal loss amounted to EUR 164 million over 2 years (excluding pension payments averted). The total losses in terms of tax income (2020 and 2021) and GDP (2020) (Approach II), were estimated at, respectively, EUR 13.58 billion and EUR 96.3 billion. This study analysed different aspects of a communicable disease outbreak and its influence on government public accounts. The choice of the two presented approaches depends on the perspective of the analysis, the time horizon of the analysis and the availability of data.

DIGITALIZATION OF ROMANIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS AT REGIONAL LEVEL

Digital transformation of public administration creates opportunities for transparency, accountability, efficiency, and better tax collection. Benefits are even more critical considering the coronavirus crisis when millions of people worldwide engage in online solutions. Our research paper offers clear insights into the public administrations' strategic management when it comes to the impact of digitalization upon local tax revenues collection. In this setting, we investigate the effects of the digitalization of the Romanian public sector, focusing on local tax revenues collection covering the period 2015–2021. The data was collected from the national platform for e-payments – ghiseul.ro. To assess the impact of digitalization, we opted for the panel data analysis, complemented by reliability and robustness tests. The local tax revenues are settled as the dependent variable and analysed in relationship with the number of payments made via the above-mentioned platform (assigned as a proxy for digitalization). Gross domestic product per capita, Unemployment rate, and Average net earnings are control variables. Our outcomes show that digitalization impacts local tax revenues, but it differs across the country, the highest impact being registered in the case of macro-region 3. All independent variables are statistically significant, leading to the assumption that the empirical model is accurate. © 2023 The Author(s).

DETERMINANTS OF TAX REVENUE IN INDONESIA BEFORE PANDEMIC COVID-19*

The present article intends to examine the impact of market size, openness, inflation rate, political stability, level of corruption, population, and level of human capital, and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on tax revenue. This research is a quantitative research with a multiplier linear regression model. The sample used includes provinces in Indonesia from 2014 to 2019 with 180 observations. Model testing is done with FEM – GLS Heteros and Autoregressive model. The results show that market size, openness, inflation rate, corruption level, population, and human capital and FDI have a positive effect on tax revenue. The effect of the inflation rate is not according to the research hypothesis. This shows that a stable inflation rate is one possibility that has a positive relationship to tax revenue. When the price of goods or services rises but is still within a controllable threshold, it will increase the amount of income and of course tax revenue. Meanwhile, political stability has no effect on tax revenue. So that political stability is not the key to tax revenue. Political stability has a weak influence on low and middle-income countries. As for the level of corruption, there are new findings which have a positive effect on tax revenue. The level of corruption is measured by the number of corruption crimes handled by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), while the handling of corruption is not only carried out by the KPK. The actual impact of corruption shall be observed through analyzing personal income tax instead. © 2022, Procedia Environmental Science, Engineering and Management. All Rights Reserved.

Online shopping can redistribute local tax revenue from urban to rural America

What is the effect of e-commerce on the geographic distribution of local sales tax revenues? Using COVID-19 as a shock to online shopping and hand-collected high-frequency data on local sales tax revenue, we document an important shift in the state and local public finance landscape. As e-commerce increases, a destination basis for remote sales taxes results in higher growth in local sales tax collections in smaller, generally more rural jurisdictions. This increase comes at the expense of larger urban retail centers, which previously enjoyed an origin basis for sales tax collections. As households replace in-person commerce with online shopping, sales taxes no longer accrue to urban centers with large concentrations of retail establishments and instead expand the tax base of smaller jurisdictions. State-level reforms that enforce sales tax compliance generally mitigate the revenue falls in larger jurisdictions and amplify the increases in smaller jurisdictions. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

EVIDENCE FROM DYNAMIC SYMMETRIC AND ASYMMETRIC CAUSALITY TESTS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TAX REVENUES AND PUBLIC EXPENDITURES IN G7 COUNTRIES

In this study, it is aimed to determine the symmetric and asymmetric causal relations between tax revenues and public expenditures in G7 countries. Annual data for the years 1990 through 2021 were used to determine the relationships between the variables. The Hacker and Hatemi-J (2012) bootstrap symmetric causality test, the Hatemi-J (2012) bootstrap asymmetric causality test, and the Hatemi-J (2021) dynamic bootstrap symmetric and asymmetric causality tests were used. The symmetric and asymmetric causality tests revealed few causal linkages between the variables, however the dynamic symmetric and asymmetric causality tests revealed more causal relationships. According to our research, it is essential to use dynamic analysis methods that can generate unique outcomes for sub-periods rather than analysis methods that generate a single result for the entire period in dynamic domains like public expenditure and national tax policies. In reality, it has been noted that throughout the Quantitative Easing period introduced following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis in the USA and during the COVID 19 process, public spending have expanded independently of budget revenues. Similar circumstances occurred in France during the EU debt crisis (2013– 2017), in Italy during the Great Recession of 2007–2009, and during COVID 19. When the global economic environment was favorable between 2017 and 2019, Germany, United Kingdom, and Italy organized their public expenditures in accordance with tax revenues, functioning within the framework of the Tax-Spend Hypothesis. As a result, for the effectiveness of fiscal policy, nations may use various fiscal policy techniques during various economic conjuncture times. © 2022, Symmetrion. All rights reserved.

Evaluating the Impact of COVID-19 on Transportation Infrastructure Funding in the United States

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a reduction in business and routine activity and resulted in less motor fuel consumption. Thus, the gas tax revenue is reduced, which is the major funding resource supporting the rehabilitation and maintenance of transportation infrastructure systems. The focus of this study is to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on transportation infrastructure funds in the United States through analyzing the motor fuel consumption data. Machine learning models were developed by integrating COVID-19 scenarios, fuel consumptions, and demographic data. The best model achieves an R2-score of more than 95% and captures the fluctuations of fuel consumption during the pandemic. Using the developed model, we project future motor gas consumption for each state. For some states, the gas tax revenues are going to be 10%-15% lower than the pre-pandemic level for at least one or two years. © 2022 International Conference on Transportation and Development

Direct Digital Services Taxes in Africa and the Canons of Taxation

The unprecedented expansion of the digital economy has increased the intricacy of mobilising tax revenues from both domestic and international transactions. Tax evasion and avoidance are perpetuated by the invisible nature of digital transactions. To minimise the untapped revenues, countries all over the world are mapping policy strategies on how to collect revenue from this sector. African countries are not an exception. They have constructed digital tax policies to levy both direct and indirect taxes on digital transactions. This paper focuses on direct digital service taxes (DSTs). Direct digital service taxes have been an issue of debate among governments, policy makers, academics, tax bodies, and development organisations. Disagreements coalesce around their structure, their adherence to the canons of taxation, opportunities, and challenges as well as consequences of implementing them. Through a literature review, this paper assesses the legislative structure and administration of digital service taxes in relation to the canons of taxation. The findings of the review were conflicting. While certain aspects, motives, and possible outcomes of the taxes upheld the principles of taxation, some of these were conflicting with the principles. This could possibly be linked to variations in the economic, political, and social contexts in African countries and between developed and developing countries. The study recommends that while digital service taxes are an irrefutable necessity to tap tax revenues from the digital economy, African countries should ensure that equity, neutrality, economy, and efficiency among other principles are considered and balanced with the fundamental roles of tax policy.

The Impact of Fiscal Policy Instruments on Economic Wellness: Evidence From Malaysian Per Capita Income

This study examines the strength of the impact of fiscal policy tools on economic wellbeing as measured by per capita income in Malaysia from 1996 to 2020. The impact of fiscal policy instruments on economic wellness, represented by real income per capita, is measured using the autoregressive distributed lags model. The speed of adjustment from short-run disequilibrium to long-run equilibrium is also measured to assess the strength of the fiscal instruments' impact on per capita income. Empirical results exhibit the existence of co-integration relationships between per capita income, tax revenue, and government spending. The findings provide strong support for the presence of a long-run positive impact on government spending and a long-run negative impact of tax revenue on per capita income. The coefficient of ECTt-1 indicates that deviations from a short-run disequilibrium to a long-run equilibrium from the current to the future period are corrected with a speed of 76% (equivalent to a duration of 1.5-2 years to return to equilibrium). The practical and policy implication of the results is fiscal instruments play a significant role, mainly in alleviating the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the long run.

Estimating the Employment and Fiscal Consequences of Thermal Coal Phase-Out in China

China hosts over half of global coal-fired power generation capacity and has the world’s largest coal reserves. Its 2060 carbon neutrality goal will require coal-fired electricity generation to shrink dramatically, with or without carbon capture and storage technology. Two macroeconomic areas in which the socioeconomic impact of this decline is felt are losses in jobs and tax revenues supported by thermal coal mining, transport and power generation. At the national level, under a ‘baseline’ (B) scenario consistent with China’s carbon neutrality goal, labour productivity growth in coal mining implies that significant job losses will occur nationally in the medium term, even if all coal plants continue operating as planned. Jobs supported by the coal power industry would decline from an estimated 2.7 million in 2021, to 1.44 million in 2035 and 94,000 in 2050, with jobs losses from mining alone expected to exceed 1.1 million by 2035. Tax revenues from thermal coal would total approximately CNY 300 billion annually from 2021–2030, peaking in 2023 at CNY 340 billion. This is significantly less than estimated subsidies of at least CNY 480 billion, suggesting coal is likely a net fiscal drain on China’s public finances, even without accounting for the costs of local pollution and the social cost of carbon. As coal plant retirements accelerate, from 2034 onwards, fiscal revenues begin to fall more rapidly, with rates of decline rising from 1% in the 2020s to over 10% a year by the 2040s. More aggressive climate policy and technology scenarios bring job and tax losses forward in time, while a No Transition policy, in which all currently planned coal plants are built, delays but does not ultimately prevent these losses. At the provincial level, China’s major coal-producing provinces will likely face challenges in managing the localised effects of expected job losses and finding productive alternative uses for this labour. Governments of coal-producing provinces like Inner Mongolia, with an industry highly dependent on exports to other provinces, are more exposed than others to declining tax revenues from coal, and more insulated from job losses, given their high current degree of labour efficiency. Although their provincial revenues are likely to remain stable until the early 2030s under the B scenario, the possibility of increasing policy stringency underlines the need for revenue and skill base diversification. At the firm level, China’s ‘Big Five’ state-owned power companies were responsible for over 40% of both jobs and tax revenues in 2021. The number of jobs supported by the activities of each of the largest ten firms, with one exception, will decline by 71–84% by the early 2040s, with the tax contribution of each declining by 43–69% in the same period.

The determinants and cyclicality of fiscal policy: Empirical evidence from East Africa

As part of the regional integration process, East African Community (EAC) member countries agreed upon macroeconomic convergence criteria that include, among others, harmonizing and restricting the level of fiscal deficits. However, achieving these targets has been faced with heightened vulnerabilities, including those related to the global financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and domestic policy slippages. Consequently, high fiscal deficits are fast leading to accumulation of debt. This paper investigates the macroeconomic determinants and cyclicality of fiscal policy in a panel of five EAC countries for the period 1980–2020. Using a combination of linear and nonlinear panel ARDL methods, long-run results show that the fiscal deficit is positively associated with current account balance, real per capita GDP, and interest rate;and negatively associated with the GDP deflator, grants, and debt service. Disaggregating fiscal balances into their revenue and expenditure components shows that government spending is procyclical, while tax effort is countercyclical. Specifically, both government expenditures and tax-to-GDP ratios are positively associated with real per capita GDP regardless of whether this relationship is observed during growth accelerations or decelerations. The size and statistical significance of short-run asymmetric effects of real per capita GDP on fiscal policy vary between countries.