Economic rent, economic efficiency, and the distribution of natural resource tax burdens: copper and coal

Journal Article · Thu Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1982 · Nat. Resour. J.; (United States)

OSTI ID:6953993

Church, A M

Nearly all phases of extracting and processing natural resources are subject to taxation. These levies include taxes on output (severance, privilege,and resource excise taxes, as well as royalty and lease payments to government as resource owner), on inputs to the production process (taxes on labor, materials and investment goods), on profits (corporate income taxes and net proceeds and lease payments), and on the resource in situ (property taxes on reserves and bonus lease payments). Although the effect of taxes on extraction costs, the rate of extraction, exploration and development (as well as investments in processing facilities), ore grade, total recovery, and the time path of prices of the extracted resource and the resource in situ are relatively well developed in the literature, criteria for developing an optimum tax policy and evaluating actual tax policies are not included in this literature. The first section of this paper summarizes the economist's methods for evaluating tax policy. The next section reviews the simulation of the effects of alternative tax policies in models of the domestic (US) copper and coal industries. In the final section, the results of the simulations are evaluated in light of the methods discussed in the first section. 27 references, 3 figures, 9 tables.

• Research Organization: Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque
• OSTI ID: 6953993
• Journal Information: Nat. Resour. J.; (United States), Journal Name: Nat. Resour. J.; (United States) Vol. 22:3; ISSN NRJOA
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290200 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Economics & Sociology
290400* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Energy Resources
CARBONACEOUS MATERIALS
COAL
COPPER
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
ECONOMIC POLICY
ECONOMICS
ELEMENTS
ENERGY SOURCES
FOSSIL FUELS
FUELS
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
MATERIALS
METALS
RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
SIMULATION
TAXES
TRANSITION ELEMENTS