Intro; Preface and Acknowledgments; Contents; Notes on Contributors; List of Figures; List of Tables; The Political Economy of Taxing, Spending, and Redistribution Since 1945: An Introduction; References; How Employers and Conservatives Shaped the Modern Tax State; Determinants of Tax Regimes; The Politics of State-Building Versus Crisis Mobilization; The Quantitative Analysis; Taxation in Denmark and the United States; The Evolution of the Danish Revenue System; The Evolution of the American Revenue System; Conclusion; Technical Appendix; Data Sources for Top Income Tax Rates; References
After the 2000s: Universalism Is OverturnedConclusion; References; The Powerlessness of Employees in France: The Spread of Income Taxation, 1945-1980; Preliminaries to a Reform: The Pro-Natalist Agenda Setting of 1945; External Pressure to Increase the Yield from Income Taxation: the 1948 Tax Reform; The Battle Against Fraud; Victory for the Self-Employed: de Gaulle's Reform of Income Taxation in 1959; An Increasingly Unfair Tax System; Conclusion; References; Tax Policy in the United States: Was There a "Neo-Liberal" Revolution in the 1970s and 1980s?
How They All Came to Love the VAT: Consumption Taxes, Big Business, and the Welfare State in SwedenAn Era of Transformation; Common Explanations for Postwar Regressive Taxation; Economic Forces and Constraints; Technocracy and the Role of Supranational Organizations; Necessary for Public Welfare?; How to Evaluate the Potential Explanatory Factors; A Corporatist Legislative Process; General Taxes on Consumption in Sweden; The Fiscal Setting of the 1950s; Consolidating the Sales Tax While Satisfying Business Interests; International Relations; Conclusions Regarding the Swedish Path to VAT
What Is Meant by "Neo-Liberal" Tax Policy?Political Consensus and Tax Cutting, 1945-1971; The Crisis of the 1970s and Its Impact on Tax Policy; Ronald Reagan and the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981; Was Reagan's Tax Program Revolutionary?; Effects of the Reagan Tax Cuts on Inequality; Effects of the Reagan Expenditure Policies on Inequality; American Exceptionalism Redux; References; Tax Reformers' Ideas, the Expenditure-Taxation Nexus, and Comprehensive Tax Reform in the United States, 1961-1986; Introduction; Comprehensive Tax Reformers and John Maynard Keynes, 1920s-1950s
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This book provides a historical understanding of current debates over tax reform and offers a comparative framework for discussing the relationship between fiscal policy and the distribution of income and wealth. Topics covered include the evolution of income taxation since World War II; the turn toward value added taxation; the relationship between tax reform and the construction of welfare states; the impact of globalization on tax and fiscal policy; the social forces shaping tax consent; and the political economy of tax and fiscal reform. These topics are covered in case studies that focus on significant episodes in the fiscal history of Denmark, Sweden, France, Greece, the United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, and Japan.