335 entries
Fiscal policy
Government finance — budgets, public debt, sovereign default, taxation at the sovereign level.
- Tax Expenditures vs Direct Spending: What Is the Difference? Tax expenditures—deductions, credits, and exclusions—are foregone tax revenue used to achieve policy goals. The difference between tax expenditures and direct spending lies in who claims the benefit and how the budget records it.
- Tax Gap: Definition and Causes The tax gap is the difference between taxes legally owed and taxes actually paid; its causes range from evasion to unintentional underpayment.
- Tax Incidence How the economic burden of a tax falls between buyers and sellers through price adjustment.
- Tax Incidence: Who Bears the Burden Tax incidence explains why the legal taxpayer and the economic bearer of a tax burden often differ, determined by supply and demand elasticity.
- Tax Multiplier The negative ratio of GDP change to a dollar increase in taxes; typically ranges from −0.5 to −1.5 in magnitude.
- Tax Treaty Benefits for Nonresident Investors How bilateral tax treaties reduce withholding taxes on dividends and interest for nonresident investors, and how to claim treaty benefits.
- Tax Wedge and Its Effect on the Labor Market How the tax wedge—the gap between employer cost and employee take-home—shapes employment levels, wages, and labor supply decisions.
- Tax-Loss Harvesting: How It Works How investors sell losing securities to offset capital gains and reduce tax liability, including wash-sale limits and net benefit calculations.
- Temporary vs Permanent Government Spending Multiplier Why temporary stimulus multipliers are smaller than permanent spending: Ricardian effects, consumer behavior, and expectations.
- Territorial Tax System A tax system that taxes only domestic-source income, leaving foreign-source income untaxed at home—versus worldwide income taxation.
- The Federal Budget Process Timeline A walkthrough of the U.S. federal budget process timeline: presidential submission, committee markup, floor votes, reconciliation, and final enactment—explaining why delays are endemic.
- The Tax Gap: Causes and Enforcement The difference between taxes owed and taxes collected; main sources of noncompliance and how governments attempt to close it through audits and enforcement.
- Thin Capitalisation Rules in Corporate Taxation How governments limit interest deductibility on related-party debt to prevent multinationals from eroding the tax base through artificial leverage.
- Time Limits on Welfare Benefits Explained Time limits on welfare benefits are cumulative eligibility caps that restrict how long a recipient can draw benefits. Clock-pausing rules and hardship exemptions vary by programme.
- Tobin Tax: How a Financial Transaction Tax Works A Tobin tax is a small levy on currency trades, securities transactions, or derivatives. It aims to reduce speculation and raise revenue, though debate continues over whether it suppresses volatility or merely shrinks market liquidity.
- Transfer Payment A transfer payment is a government payment to an individual that is not compensation for a good or service produced. Social Security, unemployment insurance, and welfare are transfer payments.
- Transfer Payment Multiplier The factor by which social transfers ripple through the economy to increase GDP, typically smaller than government spending multipliers.
- Transfer Pricing How multinationals set prices on intra-group sales and determine how profits are split across jurisdictions.
- Unemployment Insurance Government programme providing temporary income support to workers who lose jobs, funded by payroll taxes and designed to stabilise demand during economic downturns.
- Unified Federal Budget The consolidated US budget framework that combines on-budget and trust-fund accounts into a single reported surplus or deficit.
- Universal Basic Income Unconditional cash transfers to all citizens or residents, designed to reduce poverty and tested through government and academic pilot programs worldwide.
- Universal Credit Taper Rate Explained How Universal Credit's earnings taper reduces the benefit by 55 pence for every pound earned, with examples of effective tax rates on different wages.
- Value Added Tax Multi-stage consumption tax collected at each production step; used by most developed economies.
- Vulture Funds in Sovereign Debt Learn how vulture funds buy defaulted sovereign debt at discounts and pursue full repayment through litigation.
- War Bonds Government debt instruments marketed directly to citizens for patriotic and financial reasons, used to finance large-scale military mobilisation.
- Wealth Tax An annual tax on net worth above a threshold, intended to address inequality but facing enforcement challenges and capital-flight risks.
- Welfare Cliff A sharp phase-out of benefits that creates a spike in implicit marginal tax rates, making it financially unwise to increase earnings.
- What Happens When the Debt Ceiling Is Breached When the US debt ceiling is breached, Treasury must choose which obligations to pay first—a sequence that affects federal workers, retirees, and financial markets.
- Why Emerging Markets Default at Lower Debt Levels Debt intolerance explains why emerging markets lose market access at debt ratios that advanced economies carry easily, rooted in institutional weakness and default history.
- Willingness vs Ability to Pay in Sovereign Debt The distinction between political choice and economic capacity in sovereign debt repayment, and why it matters for investment risk and IMF programmes.
- Withholding Tax Tax collected at source on payments such as dividends, interest, and wages before remittance to the authorities.
- Work Requirements in Transfer Programs Mandatory work or job-search conditions in cash and food assistance programs: evidence on behavioral effects, employment outcomes, and poverty impact.
- Worldwide vs Territorial Tax System: Policy Tradeoffs Compares two frameworks for taxing multinational corporate income, examining revenue, incentive effects, and competitiveness consequences of each.
- Zero Lower Bound Multiplier The larger fiscal multiplier effect that occurs when interest rates are stuck at or near zero, preventing monetary offset.
- Zero-Based Budgeting in Government Zero-based budgeting requires government agencies to justify every line item from scratch each cycle instead of using the prior year as the baseline, promoting scrutiny of existing spending.
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