It is said that there are only two things that are certain in life: death and taxes.
The government needs the financial resources to perform its duties.
Taxes are obviously necessary.
However, not all taxes are created equal.
What criteria can we use to evaluate the usefulness of a tax, and its contribution to running a balanced society?
What taxes are harmful and should be abolished?
What taxes would, overall, be more beneficial?
What proportions do harmful taxes take in a government's budget, as compared to more benign taxes?
How has globalization affected the taxation of labor and capital incomes?
To address this question, we build and analyze a new, global database on
effective macroeconomic tax rates in more than 150 countries since 1965,
combining national accounts data with government revenue statistics,
including from a wide variety of archival records.