This paper shows that an economic slump can induce a government to invest in fiscal capacity. Large negative income shocks stress the revenue raising capability of narrow tax bases, making an increase in tax base breadth desirable relative to its fixed implementation cost. A broader tax base enables revenue to be raised at lower tax...

Tax reform is in the news daily. Calls for fundamental reform have become louder, but there are diverse views on the direction and scope of the reform that is needed. The Liberal/National Coalition Government has committed to a White Paper process on Tax Reform, which the Government has indicated will commence with the release of...

This paper is motivated by our attempt to answer an empirical question: how is private health insurance take-up in Australia affected by the income threshold at which the Medicare Levy Surcharge (MLS) kicks in? We propose a new difference de-convolution kernel estimator for the location and size of regression discontinuities. We also propose a bootstrapping...

This Working Paper traces the discursive history of the principles of benefit and legitimacy of taxation from the late eighteenth century to the present day. It is observed that successful tax states – especially democratic states – seem to depend on both an acceptance by taxpayers of benefits derived under government and a fiscal constitution...