Distributional Implications of the Highway Revenue Act

Abstract

Estimates have been developed of how the burden of the Federal Highway Revenue Act of 1982 is distributed in relation to the former federal highway tax package. The tax burdens are reported by population-income decile. A large input-output model with several linking models of consumer expenditures and vehicle stocks is used to compute the indirect effects on consumers, assuming all tax payments are passed forward as higher product prices. The net burden of the new law is shown to be distributed regressively with respect to after-tax family income. The indirect effects are somewhat more regressively distributed than the direct effects.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Archibald

Gillingham

(1981) “The distributional impact of alternative gasoline conservation policies.”. Bell J. of Economics 12: 426–444.

Leontief

(1966) Input-Output Economics. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

McELROY

Siegfried

J. J.

Sweeney

G. H.

(1982) “The incidence of price changes in the U.S. economy.”. Rev. of Economics and Statistics 64: 191–203.

Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association (1981) Motor Vehicle Facts and Figures 1981. Detroit: author.

Musgrave

R. A.

(1959) The Theory of Public Finance. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Phares

(1980) Who Pays State and Local Taxes? Cambridge: Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain Publishers.

Stucker

J. P.

(1977) “The distributional implications of a tax on gasoline.”. Policy Analysis 3: 171–186.

Suits

D. B.

(1977) “Measurement of tax progressivity.”. Amer. Econ. Rev. 67 (4): 747–752.

U.S. Department of Commerce (1979a) Industry Input Output Tables of the U.S., 1972 Computer Tape. Washington, DC: author.

10.

U.S. Department of Commerce (1979b) Detailed Item Purchases by Personal Consumption Expenditures. Washington, DC: author.

11.

U.S. Department of Commerce (1979c) 1977 Census of Transportation. Washington, DC: author.

12.

U.S. Department of Labor (1978) Consumer Expenditure Survey: Integrated Diary and Interview Survey Data, 1972–73, Bulletin 1992. Washington, DC: author.