Political Budget Cycle, Tax Collection, and Yardstick Competition

Abstract

This paper exploits the political cycle of Italian municipalities to test for the presence of strategic interactions in the collection of local taxation. The revenue from the personal income tax surcharge—a tax tool of low salience—is (positively) plagued by political manipulation and is found to be a strategic complement, but only when mayors run for re-election, a finding consistent with the yardstick competition hypothesis. More salient fiscal tools, such as property tax and user fees and charges, are also (negatively) affected by budget cycles, but they do not appear to be spatially correlated.

Politicians Avoid Tax Increases Around Elections

“…The novelty of our data is that session laws let us see enactment dates and, hence, create I[GasT axBillIncrease it > 0] and I[CIT BillIncrease it > 0]. Earlier research largely considers, and has data on, only implementation dates [48,40,56,64,24,72,10,38,68,57], 3 Citations vary by state. 4 Chang [20] provides evidence that statutorily temporary tax policies should be treated like permanent tax policies.…”

Assessing the influence of Brazilian mayors' human capital and political context on fiscal inputs

“…In Latin America, subnational government performance has been assessed in terms of tax collection Gomes, 2015, Petrovsky andAvellaneda, 2014); financial indicators (Avellaneda 2009b, Gomes et al, 2013; health care scores (Dantas et al, 2017, Olvera and Avellaneda, 2019, Ferraresi, 2021, De Oliveira et al, 2016, Paschoalotto et al, 2018, Ribeiro et al, 2018, Russo et al, 2019, Vargas et al, 2015; electricity and water services, educational achievements (Avellaneda, 2009a, Caetano et al 2017, Queiroz et al, 2020, Rosa et al, 2019, Paschoalotto et al, 2020Santos et al, 2020); and environmental indicators (Dantas et al, 2017, De la Riva 2021.…”

The Construction of Digital Tax Collection Model Based on Knowledge Graph Empowered by IoT Technology

“…Currently, emerging technologies represented by RPA, 5G, big data, artificial intelligence, etc., are booming and accelerating their integration with current social life and market economy development, and digitalization has become the main theme of a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation in China [1][2][3]. In the development process of China's market economy, digitalization has opened up a new space for economic development and is reshaping the economic landscape, and the digital economy has become an important power engine to promote the high-quality development of China's economy [4][5][6]. The creation of the digital economy has led to substantial changes in the structure of tax objects and tax sources; they are more decentralized compared to the past, and although traditional enterprises are still the mainstay of market economic activities, at the same time, new tax sources are being generated in large numbers [7][8].…”