Demand for services will rise during the recession, yet income from sources such as car parking charges is falling, while local taxation is capped.
The fact that the tax base falls with higher taxation through reduced incentives for education opens up for the possibility of two equilibria where the government can collect the same revenue although at different levels of tax and enforcement rates.
The WSTA blames falling sales on increasing taxation.
Most suggest some variety of a consumption tax, where the burden of taxation falls on consumption rather than on income.
But the real challenge posed by this evolution toward hyperlocal, personalized methods of taxation will fall on corporate tax departments that will need to sort out who owes what.
However, Gordon Brown has claimed that devolving all powers over income tax would mean falling into a "Tory trap" over taxation that would cut Scottish MPs' power at Westminster.
Double taxation falls especially hard on retired people.
In a classic paper in 1962, Arnold Harberger, an American economist, argued that if neither capital nor goods can cross national borders, the burden of corporate taxation falls squarely on the owners of capital.
With the majority of the population earning very low incomes, direct taxation falls on the few wealthy; income-tax rates are made sharply progressive in an attempt to achieve a degree of equality in income distribution.
The report draws heavily on several economic studies that find results similar to Mr. Hassett's, including that the so-called incidence of corporate taxation falls mainly on workers, meaning they have much to gain if such rates are cut.
Personal taxation falls into this category insofar as its progressivity is used to achieve greater justice in income distribution (rather than merely to raise revenue) and also insofar as it used to finance social insurance payments and other benefits not completely financed by compulsory contributions.
