User pays, or beneficiary pays, is a pricing approach based on the idea that the most efficient allocation of resources occurs when consumers pay the full cost of the goods that they consume. In public finance it stands in opposition to another principle of "ability-to-pay," which states that those who have the means should share more of the burden of public services. The ability-to-pay principle is one of the reasons for the general acceptance of the progressive income tax system.
The principle of user pays supports the idea of horizontal equity, which states that those in similar wealth and income positions should be treated equally by the tax system. The basic idea is that those who do not use a service should not be obligated to pay for it. As long as the beneficiary aligns exactly with the user, the user-pays principle works. Those who do not go to a movie are not obligated to pay for someone else to attend.
In public goods, beneficiaries and users sometimes do not align. The divergence of user and beneficiary occurs when production and consumption have external effects. Driver who purchase gasoline may believe that they pay for the full cost (user-pays) of using gasoline except for the greenhouse gases produced. They impose costs on the environment and are known to contribute to climate change. The "beneficiaries" must bear costs not paid in the purchase of gasoline. In that case the user-pays principle results in the driver not paying the full or social cost of using fossil fuels, which creates a strong argument for regulation and other forms of public intervention. Increasing taxes on gasoline is one possible response that preserves the user-pays principle by increasing the costs to user.
However, such analysis is often complicated by the lack of knowledge that would inform regulators of the efficient level of gas use and the costs of emissions.
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A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed upon a taxpayer by a governmental organization in order to fund various public expenditures. A failure to pay, along with evasion of or resistance to taxation, is punishable by law. Taxes consist of direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as its labour equivalent. The first known taxation took place in Ancient Egypt around 3000–2800 BC.
Transport economics is a branch of economics founded in 1959 by American economist John R. Meyer that deals with the allocation of resources within the transport sector. It has strong links to civil engineering. Transport economics differs from some other branches of economics in that the assumption of a spaceless, instantaneous economy does not hold. People and goods flow over networks at certain speeds. Demands peak. Advance ticket purchase is often induced by lower fares. The networks themselves may or may not be competitive. A single trip may require the bundling of services provided by several firms, agencies and modes.
In economics, an externality is the cost or benefit that affects a third party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit. Externalities often occur when the production or consumption of a product or service's private price equilibrium cannot reflect the true costs or benefits of that product or service for society as a whole. This causes the externality competitive equilibrium to not be a Pareto optimality.
Cost of goods sold (COGS) is the carrying value of goods sold during a particular period.
Public finance is the study of the role of the government in the economy. It is the branch of economics that assesses the government revenue and government expenditure of the public authorities and the adjustment of one or the other to achieve desirable effects and avoid undesirable ones.
A fuel tax is an excise tax imposed on the sale of fuel. In most countries the fuel tax is imposed on fuels which are intended for transportation. Fuels used to power agricultural vehicles, and/or home heating oil which is similar to diesel are taxed at a different, usually lower rate. The fuel tax receipts are often dedicated or hypothecated to transportation projects so that the fuel tax is considered by many a user fee. In other countries, the fuel tax is a source of general revenue. Sometimes, the fuel tax is used as an ecotax, to promote ecological sustainability. Fuel taxes are often considered regressive taxes.
A Pigovian tax is a tax on any market activity that generates negative externalities. The tax is intended to correct an undesirable or inefficient market outcome, and does so by being set equal to the social cost of the negative externalities. In the presence of negative externalities, the social cost of a market activity is not covered by the private cost of the activity. In such a case, the market outcome is not efficient and may lead to over-consumption of the product. Often-cited examples of such externalities are environmental pollution, and increased public healthcare costs associated with tobacco and sugary drink consumption.
Feebate is a portmanteau of "fee" and "rebate". A feebate program is a self-financing system of fees and rebates that are used to shift the costs of externalities produced by the private expropriation, fraudulent abstraction, or outright destruction of public goods onto those market actors responsible. Originally coined in the 1970s by Arthur H. Rosenfeld, feebate programs have typically been used to shift buying habits in the transportation and energy sectors.
Equity or Economic equality is the concept or idea of fairness in economics, particularly in regard to taxation or welfare economics. More specifically, it may refer to equal life chances regardless of identity, to provide all citizens with a basic and equal minimum of income, goods, and services or to increase funds and commitment for redistribution.
A Lindahl tax is a form of taxation conceived by Erik Lindahl in which individuals pay for public goods according to their marginal benefits. In other words, they pay according to the amount of satisfaction or utility they derive from the consumption of an additional unit of the public good.
Optimal tax theory or the theory of optimal taxation is the study of designing and implementing a tax that maximises a social welfare function subject to economic constraints. The social welfare function used is typically a function of individuals' utilities, most commonly some form of utilitarian function, so the tax system is chosen to maximise the aggregate of individual utilities. Tax revenue is required to fund the provision of public goods and other government services, as well as for redistribution from rich to poor individuals. However, most taxes distort individual behavior, because the activity that is taxed becomes relatively less desirable; for instance, taxes on labour income reduce the incentive to work. The optimization problem involves minimizing the distortions caused by taxation, while achieving desired levels of redistribution and revenue. Some taxes are thought to be less distorting, such as lump-sum taxes and Pigouvian taxes, where the market consumption of a good is inefficient and a tax brings consumption closer to the efficient level.
A carbon price — the method widely agreed to be the most efficient way for nations to reduce global warming emissions — is a cost applied to carbon pollution to encourage polluters to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit into the atmosphere: it usually takes the form either of a carbon tax or a requirement to purchase permits to emit, generally known as carbon emissions trading, but also called "allowances".
An excise, or excise tax, is any duty on manufactured goods that is levied at the moment of manufacture rather than at sale. Excises are often associated with customs duties ; customs are levied on goods that come into existence – as taxable items – at the border, while excise is levied on goods that came into existence inland.
The United States federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel. The federal tax was last raised in 1993 and is not indexed to inflation, which increased by a total of 73 percent from 1993 until 2018. On average, as of April 2019, state and local taxes and fees add 34.24 cents to gasoline and 35.89 cents to diesel, for a total US volume-weighted average fuel tax of 52.64 cents per gallon for gas and 60.29 cents per gallon for diesel.
A vehicle miles traveled tax, also frequently referred to as a VMT tax, VMT fee, mileage-based fee, or road user charge, is a policy of charging motorists based on how many miles they have traveled.
A ghetto tax is the phenomenon of people with low incomes, particularly those living in poverty-stricken areas, paying higher prices for goods and services.
Several theories of taxation exist in public economics. Governments at all levels need to raise revenue from a variety of sources to finance public-sector expenditures.
The benefit principle is a concept in the theory of taxation from public finance. It bases taxes to pay for public-goods expenditures on a politically-revealed willingness to pay for benefits received. The principle is sometimes likened to the function of prices in allocating private goods. In its use for assessing the efficiency of taxes and appraising fiscal policy, the benefit approach was initially developed by Knut Wicksell (1896) and Erik Lindahl (1919), two economists of the Stockholm School. Wicksell's near-unanimity formulation of the principle was premised on a just income distribution. The approach was extended in the work of Paul Samuelson, Richard Musgrave, and others. It has also been applied to such subjects as tax progressivity, corporation taxes, and taxes on property or wealth. The unanimity-rule aspect of Wicksell's approach in linking taxes and expenditures is cited as a point of departure for the study of constitutional economics in the work of James Buchanan.
The externalities of automobiles, similarly to other economic externalities, are the measurable difference in costs for other parties to those of the car proprietor, such costs not taken into account when the proprietor opts to drive their car. According to Harvard University, the main externalities of driving are local and global pollution, oil dependence, traffic congestion and traffic accidents; while according to a meta-study conducted by the Delft University these externalities are congestion and scarcity costs, accident costs, air pollution costs, noise costs, climate change costs, costs for nature and landscape, costs for water pollution, costs for soil pollution and costs of energy dependency.
This glossary of economics is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in economics, its sub-disciplines, and related fields.
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