Saturday, January 28, 2023
Jan Brueckner and Blaine Saito file tax documents at UCLA
Jan Brueckner (UC-Irvine; Academic google) presented Taxes and Telecommuting: The Impacts of State Income Taxes on a Work-from-Home Economy (with David R. Agrawal (Kentucky; Academic google)) at UCLA this week as part of his Colloquium on Tax Policy and Public Finance Hosted by Kirk Stark and Jason Oh:
This paper studies the interstate effects of decentralized taxes and spending when people can work from home (WFH). Because the WFH decouples population and employment, analyzing the impacts of taxes on state populations, employment levels, wages, and house prices is radically different from the standard model in which people live. and they work in the same state. Which state can tax telecommuters, leading to tax at source or at residence, matters for tax impacts under the WFH. Our main findings, which concern the effects of WFH on employment and wages, show that a shift from a non-WFH to WFH economy reduces employment and increases wages in high-tax states, with effects higher under taxes at source. Once WHF is established, an increase in a state’s tax rate further reduces employment while increasing wages (taxes at the source) or does not affect the labor market (taxes at residence). We show that only the residence-tax equilibrium is efficient.
blaine saito (Northeast; Academic google) presented Public Prosecutors at UCLA last week:
The US federal tax system fails to promote the values of democracy and egalitarianism. Powerful interests like the wealthy and multinational entities (MNEs) have twisted the tax system to their whim. Meanwhile, disadvantaged groups and the working class have little say or input in the development of tax policy, even when taxes serve as the foundation of the state and affect nearly every aspect of people’s lives. The result then is a system that further strengthens these interests.This article seeks to intervene to restore democratic values in taxation. It promotes the idea of democratic equality as a guiding value for the tax system, as it encompasses many of the various concepts that have been raised by scholars involved in the intersection of tax and democracy. The idea is that taxes should help give people access to capacities to participate in all aspects of civil society and that when developing policies, everyone should be treated with equal consideration. Under its current structure, the tax system fails.
This flaw is particularly noticeable in the development of Treasury Regulations and guides. These interests are not only the only ones that comment, but many of them have access to Treasury and the IRS prior to the development of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Many proposals to solve this problem do not take democratic values into account. Furthermore, the system is captured in both traditional and non-traditional ways, such as information capture, where only certain voices produce reams of information for regulatory decisions, and cultural capture, where the people working are more aligned. culturally and interact more regularly with people they already represent. accommodated interests.
The proposed intervention is to create a grant program to build fiscal capacity in a wide range of civil society organizations. Drawing on parallels in the state utility rate hearings and the superfund, which provide similar types of payments, these grants would go to groups ranging from local organizations to large national organizations. These grants could then help connect new constituencies with the development of Treasury Regulations. In addition, Treasury and the IRS should try to actively involve all grant recipients, seeking input not just through feedback, but even during the development of regulatory priorities. Such a program could help promote democratic equality in the tax system, as well as improve overall tax outcomes.
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2023/01/jan-brueckner-and-blaine-saito-present-tax-papers-at-ucla.html
