1990
This document is linked to :
L'Actualité économique ; vol. 66 no. 1 (1990)
Tous droits réservés © HEC Montréal, 1990
Pierre Lefebvre et al., « Une taxe nationale de vente doit-elle exempter l’alimentation? Une réponse d’une analyse d’équilibre général dans le cas du Québec », L'Actualité économique, ID : 10.7202/601518ar
This paper analyses the national retail sales tax reform proposed in the federal government's June 1987 White Paper on Tax Reform using an applied general equilibrium model of the Quebec economy. The model evaluates the welfare effect and the incidence effects in Quebec of replacing both the federal manufacturer's sales tax and the existing provincial retail sales tax with a two-rate national retail sales tax. We consider two scenarios, the first with food exempt and the second with food taxed. The results show that the reform with food taxed increases the efficiency gains. However, the impact on the distribution of the welfare gains (burden) of the sales tax for 28 representative household groups is only slightly modified by the tax treatment of food. It also appears that the effects of sales tax reforms are very sensitive to the export demand conditions of the economy.