Workshops & Seminars
Information about past workshops and seminars.
Income Inequality and Mobility: New Evidence for New Zealand
- When: 21 February 2023
- Time: 8.45am - 4.30pm
- Where: Level 12, Rutherford House, 23 Lambton Quay, Wellington
The Chair in Public Finance held a one-day workshop at the Wellington School of Business and Government on "Income Inequality and Mobility: New Evidence for New Zealand" on Tuesday 21st February 2023.
Presentations included:
- Latest results on changes in income inequality and mobility based on administrative data, from a 3-year CPF project funded by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment's Endeavour Fund
- Research on economic disadvantage and hardship from the New Zealand Productivity Commission
- New evidence on the incidence of taxes and government spending across the income distribution, from the New Zealand Treasury
The full programme can be viewed here.
You can view the presentations here - Session One and Session Three.
New Horizons in Tax-Transfer Microsimulation Workshop
- When: 2 June 2021
- Where: Rutherford House, 23 Lambton Quay, Pipitea, Mezzanine Floor, Room MZ03
- Presented by: Chris Ball
This workshop introduced exciting innovations in behavioural tax modelling including:
- Considerable extensions to the modelling of labour supply, including introducing more realistic assumptions around work choices available to individuals.
- New software developments, in a user-friendly package, to enable analysts to carry out numerous simulations remarkably quickly.
The new model focuses on the kind of information required by tax and welfare policy advisers, and ease of examining a wide range of reforms.
You can view the presentation here.
Research Seminar - High-frequency Spending Responses to the Earned Income Tax Credit
- When: 30 January 2020
- Where: Rutherford House, 23 Lambton Quay, Pipitea, Mezzanine Floor, Room MZ05
David Cashin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington DC
Over the past several decades, the U.S. government has shifted its support of low-income families from transfer payments and in-kind benefits to the tax system. In 2018, 25 million low-income workers received the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Our paper explores how these annual refundable tax credits affect spending of EITC recipients. To do so, we use a large data set with daily, state-level estimates of retail sales (Aladangady, et al. 2019), along with administrative data from the Internal Revenue Service. We use two sources of variation to identify the marginal propensity to consume. First, we rely on plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of EITC refunds, including changes related to the implementation of the PATH Act. Second, we use differences across states in the share of federal tax refund dollars from the EITC. We find that EITC recipients spend 25 cents out of each refund dollar at retail stores and restaurants within two weeks of issuance, with one-third of that spending in the week of receipt. In addition, we show that non-durable expenditures – such as at grocery stores and restaurants – increase, along with durable goods, on EITC receipt. The rapid and noticeable response to these large, predictable payments suggests that spending among low-income working families is sensitive to changes in their income. Our findings imply that more regular payments throughout the year – as opposed to annual, lump-sum refunds – may improve the well-being of EITC recipients. Finally, stimulus payments to EITC recipients in a recession could, according to our results, quickly boost aggregate demand.
Modelling Tax Policy and Compliance Workshop
When: 14 & 15 March 2019
Where: Kay House Duryard, University of Exeter, UK
This workshop was jointly organised by the Tax Administration Research Centre at the University of Exeter, UK and The Chair in Public Finance. The workshop was supported by funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). The workshop aimed to share recent research from Australia, New Zealand, the UK and various European countries, on developments in economic modelling of tax policy and tax compliance.
Public Economics Workshop on Modelling Tax Policy and Compliance
When: 6, 7 & 10 December 2018
Where: Rutherford House, 23 Lambton Quay, Pipitea, Mezzanine Floor, Room MZ06
This workshop was jointly organised between the Tax Administration Research Centre at the University of Exeter, UK and The Chair in Public Finance. The workshop aimed to share recent research from Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, on developments in economic modelling of tax policy and tax compliance, in conjunction with a Masterclass for tax researchers on tax-transfer microsimulation modelling.
Company Tax in the Trump Era: Options for Fiscally Sustainable Reform
When: Monday 26 February 2018 Time: 12.30pm - 1.30pm
A seminar by Professor Miranda Stewart from the University of Melbourne Law School will examine the case for alternative reforms of corporate taxation that could fund a corporate tax rate cut, while addressing key non-neutralities in the corporate tax system in an international context. These include abolition of dividend imputation in favour of a lower headline company tax rate and various reform options for the corporate tax base, ranging from the cash flow tax and allowance for corporate equity or capital to a comprehensive business income tax which would eliminate interest deductibility.
President Trump has drastically cut the US company tax rate to 21% from 35%, while ending the era of “stateless income” for corporations. Meanwhile the Australian Government aims to reduce the company tax rate from 30% to 25% but does not yet have political support to do this, in light of widespread concerns about fiscal cost, the imputation system and the nature of Australia’s resource economy.
- Download the working paper on which this presentation will be based (PDF, 992KB) – with updates for Trump developments
About Professor Miranda Stewart
Miranda Stewart is Professor at the University of Melbourne Law School and a Fellow at the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, the Australian National University, where she was director until the end of 2017. She teaches and researches in the areas of tax law and policy including taxation of business and investment entities, tax and development, not-for-profits, and tax reform in the context of globalisation