Taxes can be differentiated by the impact they have on the distribution of income and wealth. A proportional tax is a tax that impinges the same relative onus on each taxpayer—i.e., in the case where tax liability and income grow in the same proportion. A progressive tax is recognisable by a greater than proportional increase in the tax burden relative to the growth in income, and a regressive tax is characterized by a less than proportional rise in the comparative liability. Therefore, progressive taxes are thought of as taking away inequalities in income distribution, whereas regressive taxes are found to have the effect of an increase in these inequalities.
The taxes that are often regarded as progressive include individual income taxes and estate taxes. Income taxes that are categorically progressive, however, might become less so within the upper-income class—particularly if a taxpayer is able to lower his tax base by nominating deductions or by excluding some certain income elements from his taxable income. Proportional tax rates when applied to lower-income groups would also be more progressive if personal exemptions are made.
Income measured over the period of a given year may not necessarily offer the most accurate measure of taxpaying requirements. For example, transitory rises in income could be saved, and during temporary declines in income a taxpayer could elect to finance consumption by taking from savings. Therefore, if taxation is compared alongside “permanent income,” it would be less regressive (or more progressive) than when made comparable with annual income.
Sales taxes and excises (save luxuries) are usually regressive, because the share of own income consumed or spent on specific goods declines as the rate of personal income grows. Poll taxes (aka head taxes), calculated as a flat amount per capita, patently are regressive.
It is hard to dictate corporate income taxes and taxes on business as progressive, regressive, or proportionate, principally because of a lack of certainty about the ability of businesses to shift their tax expenses (see below Shifting and incidence). This difficulty of determining who bears the tax burden rests for the most part on whether a national or a subnational (that is, provincial or state) tax is being determined.
In considering the economic purpose of taxation, it is relevant to distinguish between varied points of tax rates. The statutory rates are specified in law; often these are marginal rates, but sometimes they are median rates. Marginal income tax rates indicate the fraction of incremental income that is taken by taxation when income increases by one dollar. Hence, if tax liability rises by 45 cents when income increases by one dollar, the marginal tax rate is 45 percent. Income tax laws usually contain graduated marginal rates—i.e., rates that increase as income grows. Heavy analysis of marginal tax rates need to take into account provisions apart from the formal statutory rate structure. If, for example, a particular tax credit (reduction in tax) falls by 20 cents for each one-dollar increase in income, the marginal rate is 20 percentage points higher than indicated in the statutory rates. Since marginal rates indicate how after-tax income is changed in response to changes in before-tax income, they are the important ones for considering incentive effects of taxation. It is even more difficult to know the marginal effective tax rate applied to income from business and capital, as it may depend on factors including the structure of depreciation allowances, the deductibility of interest, and the provisions for inflation adjustment. A basic economic theorem shows that the marginal effective tax rate in income from capital is zero under a consumption-based tax.
Average income tax rates signify the fraction of total income that is required in taxation. The pattern of average rates is the one that is necessary for judging the distributional equity of taxation. Under a progressive income tax the average income tax rate increases with income. Average income tax rates commonly rise with income, both because personal allowances are granted for the taxpayer and dependents and due to that marginal tax rates are graduated; on the flip side, preferential treatment of income received for the most part by high-income households could dampen these effects, producing regressivity, as displayed by average tax rates that decline as income increases.
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