Indirect Taxation and Consumption Behaviour
Indirect taxation refers to taxation that is levied on expenditure rather than on income and is one of the most important sources of revenue for governments, particularly in middle- and low-income countries. As a result, indirect taxation is frequently included in microsimulation models. These models differ from those described thus far in that they involve the use of data that contains expenditures in addition to incomes. This chapter describes the theoretical structure of a number of different types of indirect taxation. A challenge to the simulation of indirect taxation arises in that the base datasets of microsimulation models typically do not include expenditure data. A relatively simple method for combining income and expenditure data is described. As changes in indirect taxation affect the relative prices of goods, there will either be a change in consumption patterns or a change in savings. A method to model behavioural response when modelling indirect taxation is discussed. These methods are then utilized to describe some descriptive measures for the distributional attributes of consumption and some directions for policy reform. The framework developed in this chapter is then used to model the welfare impact of changes to indirect taxation in an example simulation.