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Foreword Economists have reached a broad consensus concerning the appearance of an optimal tax system. Such a system would have a very broad base—perhaps limited to consumption—and marginal tax rates as low as revenue demands will allow. While there is general agreement concerning those basic features of an optimal tax system, significant disagreement remains concerning the size of the benefits to be gained from a fundamental reform that would replace the current system of high marginal tax rates with one that conformed closely to the prescriptions of theory. Disagreement also abounds concerning the distributional impact of fundamental tax reforms. The lack of professional consensus undoubtedly discourages would-be reformers, who for more than a decade have shied away from fundamental fixes and instead tinkered endlessly with a system that has increased steadily in complexity.
With this state of affairs in mind, we at AEI have organized a tax reform seminar series since January 1996. At each seminar, an economist presents original research designed to bring consensus concerning the costs and benefits of fundamental tax reform one step closer. Recent topics include transition problems in moving to a consumption tax, the effects of consumption taxation on housing and the stock market, the distributional impact of tax reforms, the effect of privatizing Social Security on the long-term budget outlook, and the international tax implications of fundamental reform.
The goal of this pamphlet series is to distribute the best research on economic issues in tax reform to as broad an audience as possible. Each publication reflects not only the insights of the authors, but also the helpful comments and criticisms of seminar participants—economists, attorneys, accountants, and journalists in the tax policy community.
Kevin A. Hassett
American Enterprise Institute
Introduction The X tax is the name I have given to a system designed to replace the income tax on corporations and individuals in the United States (Bradford 1986, 1996a). Like the present system, it is based on a combination of company and individual taxation. It differs from the present system in two related respects, which it shares with several other tax-restructuring plans: First, treatment of the tax base of companies and treatment of the earnings of workers are tightly coordinated. In the language of Hall and Rabushka (1995), the object is to tax all income, but only once, either at the level of the company or the level of the worker. Second, it is a consumption-type, rather than an income-type, tax. (For a review of what is meant by consumption-type and income-type taxes, see Bradford 1986.) These features make possible substantial simplification of the tax system and greater neutrality of taxation with respect to decisions about how much, where, and in what form to invest, while retaining substantial scope for progressivity.
This work represents an extension of ideas I developed in a series of previous publications. Most of them are cited as I go along and many have been collected in Bradford 2001. (With apologies, I do not attempt to credit comprehensively the writings of others from which I have learned about all of this or to which I may implicitly respond.) Although there is new material about the X tax as such, my main object here is to consider the options for incorporating into a U.S. X tax transactions that cross national boundaries. I also consider the neutrality and equity properties of the worldwide use of national X taxes, such as might result from a broader program to transform the international system of company taxes and their links.
In the interest of focusing on basic principles, I touch only lightly, if at all, on various practical and political dimensions of the international tax dilemma. Perhaps the most important matter to which I give only the briefest attention is the problem of coordination with the tax systems of other countries that would arise if the regime of taxation presented here were to be adopted unilaterally by the United States. The transition to such a regime would raise many questions as to its impact on other countries that did not adopt a similar approach and, more generally, with respect to obligations under treaties covering international trade and taxation. Although I suggest in this paper that some of these problems may be less serious than commonly assumed, no doubt I am missing many other issues.
David F. Bradford is professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and visiting professor of law at New York University. |
