Some Aspects of Tax Progressivity in Natural Resources Taxation

摘要

The paper deals with a well-defined subset of the issues raised by the functional relationship between tax and tax basis in a natural resource tax system. The question asked is: What are the necessary and/or sufficient properties of the tax system such that the decisions taken under uncertainty by the companies are consistent with social welfare, i.e are the same decisions as would be taken by the Society. It is shown that those properties are closely related to progressivity. Particular care has been taken to formulate both private and social decision criteria. Expected utility criteria are the only really decisive ones, and they are formulated directly in terms of stochastic dominance. 7 references. 6 figures. (ERA citation 12:047147)