A campaign to introduce a tax on disposable plastic bags in England has been launched by various pressure groups, including The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Keep Britain Tidy, the Marine Conservation Society and Surfers Against Sewage. Plastic bags, they maintain, litter streets and the countryside and pollute the seas, where they cause considerable damage to marine life.
They propose a tax of 5p per bag, which would be passed on to consumers. Such a levy has already been introduced in Wales in October 2011. As a result, plastic bag use in Wales has dropped dramatically (see also the full report from the Welsh Government). The Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly are also planning introducing similar charges.
Many other governments have introduced taxes, charges or bans on plastic bags and many more are considering introducing such measures. Ireland introduced a 15 euro cent charge on single-use plastic bags as far back as 2002 and saw a 94% reduction in plastic bag use (328 per person per year to 21). The charge was raised to 22 euro cents in 2007 after bag use rose to 30 per person.
Other countries have banned plastic bags altogether: some, such as Rwanda and Somalia have banned all plastic bags; others, such as China and South Africa have banned very thin bags; others, such as Italy, have banned non-biodegradable ones.
In the USA, various states or districts have introduced levies and in the EU, where more than four billion bags are thrown away each year, the European Commission will soon publish proposals for limiting the use of plastic bags.
So what are the arguments for limiting the use of plastic bags? Why is it not enough to leave things simply to the market? And if the use of plastic bags is to be reduced, what’s the most efficient way of doing so? Are there any problems with alternatives to plastic bags? The following articles and reports consider these questions?
Articles
England urged to pick up Wales’ plastic bag levy businessGreen, Jessica Shankleman (1/8/12)
Wales’ plastic bag charge yields massive green savings businessGreen, Jessica Shankleman (5/7/12)
Supermarkets ‘should charge £1 a bag’ BBC Today Programme, Samantha Harding and Judith Holder (2/8/12)
Environmentalists team up to push for bag tax in England Plastics News, Anthony Clark (1/8/12)
Break the Bag Habit Keep Britain Tidy (1/8/12)
Plastic bag use ‘up for second year running’ Guardian, Rebecca Smithers (5/7/12)
Plastic bag use in Wales plummets due to 5p charge, figures show Guardian, Adam Vaughan (4/7/12)
Carrier bag charge ‘effective and popular’ figures reveal ITV News (4/7/12)
What should be done about plastic bags? BBC News Magazine, Chris Summers (19/3/12)
Irish bag tax hailed success BBC News, Chris Summers (20/8/02)
The Big Fix The Math Behind Sacking Disposable Bags Atlantic Cities, Nate Berg (26/9/11)
Fremantle moves to ban plastic bags ABC News, Lucy Martin (23/7/12)
Bans Plastic Bag Ban Report, Ted Duboise (updated)
Vote With Your Dollars, and Also Vote New York Times, Gernot Wagner (30/7/12)
Reports
Evaluation Of The Introduction Of The Single-Use Carrier Bag Charge In Wales: Attitude Change And Behavioural Spillover, Wouter Poortinga, Lorraine Whitmarsh and Christine Suffolk Report to Welsh Government by Cardiff University (June 2012)
Life cycle assessment of supermarket carrierbags: a review of the bags available in 2006 Environment Agency, Joanna Marchant (25/7/11)
Stakeholder consultation on options to reduce the use of plastic carrier bags … EC Environment (19/3/12)
Questions
- Draw a diagram demonstrating the externalities involved in the use of plastic bags. Show the marginal private and social costs and benefits and the socially efficient level of consumption.
- How would you set about establishing the amount of consumer surplus from the use of plastic bags at a zero price?
- Compare the relative social efficiency of a tax on plastic bags with a ban on plastic bags.
- Would education be an effective alternative to taxing plastic bags?
- Why might it be difficult to get supermarkets and other retailers to agree to a voluntary ban on giving out free plastic bags?
- Why might it be extremely difficult in practice to establish the socially efficient price for plastic bags?
Barclays’ Chief Executive, Bob Diamond, has resigned following revelations that Barclays staff had been involved in rigging the LIBOR in the period 2005–9, including the financial crisis of 2007–9.
So what is the LIBOR; how is it set; what were the reasons for Barclays (and other banks, as will soon be revealed) attempting to manipulate the rate; and what were the consequences?
The LIBOR, or London interbank offered rate, is the average of what banks report that they would have to pay to borrow from one another in the inter-bank market. Separate LIBORs are calculated for 15 different lending periods: overnight, one week, one month, two months, three months, six months, etc. The rates are set daily as the average of submissions made to Thomson Reuters by some 15 to 20 banks (a poll overseen by the British Bankers’ Association). Thomson Reuters then publishes the LIBORs, along with all of the submissions from individual banks which are used to calculate it.
Many interest rates around the world are based on LIBORs, or their European counterpart, EURIBORs. They include bond rates, mortgage rates, overdraft rates, etc. Trillions of dollars worth of such assets are benchmarked to the LIBORs. Thus manipulating LIBORs by even 1 basis point (0.01%) can result in millions of dollars worth of gains (or losses) to banks.
The charge, made by the Financial Services Authority, is that Barclays staff deliberately under- or overstated the rate at which the bank would have to borrow. For example, when interbank loans were drying up in the autumn of 2008, Barclays staff were accused of deliberately understating the rate at which they would have to borrow in order to persuade markets that the bank was facing less difficulty than it really was and thereby boost confidence in the bank. In other words they were accused of trying to manipulate LIBORs down by lying.
As it was the LIBORs were rising well above bank rate. The spread for the one-month LIBOR was around 1 to 1.2% above Bank Rate. Today it is around 0.1 to 0.15% above Bank Rate. Without lying by staff in Barclays, RBS and probably other banks too, the spread in 2008 may have been quite a bit higher still.
The following articles look at the issue, its impact at the time and the aftermath today.
Articles
A Libor primer The Globe and Mail, Kevin Carmichael (3/7/12)
60 second guide to Libor Which? (3/7/12)
Explaining the Libor interest rate mess CNN Money (3/7/12)
Fixing Libor Financial Times (27/6/12)
LIBOR in the News: What it is, Why it’s Important Technorati, John Sollars (2/7/12)
Libor rigging ‘was institutionalised at major UK bank’ The Telegraph, Philip Aldrick (1/7/12)
Barclays ‘attempted to manipulate interest rates’ BBC News, Robert Peston (27/6/12)
The Libor Conspiracy: Were the Bank of England and Whitehall in on it? Independent, Oliver Wright, James Moore , Nigel Morris (4/7/12)
Fixing LIBOR The Economist (10/3/12)
Cleaning up LIBOR? The Economist (14/5/12)
Eagle fried The Economist, Schumpeter (27/6/12)
Barclays looks like the victim Financial Post, Terence Corcoran (3/7/12)
Inconvenient truths about Libor BBC News, Stephanie Flanders (4/7/12)
Timeline: Barclays’ widening Libor-fixing scandal BBC News (5/7/12)
The elusive truth about Barclays’ lie BBC News, Robert Peston (4/7/12)
Rate Fixing Scandal Is International: EU’s Almunia CNBC, Shai Ahmed (4/7/12)
Bank-Bonus Culture to Blame for Barclays Scandal The Daily Beast, Alex Klein (3/7/12)
Libor scandal ‘damaging’ for City BBC Today Programme, Andrew Lilico and Mark Boleat (5/7/12)
Data
Libor rate fixing: see each bank’s submissions Guardian Data Blog, Simon Rogers (3/7/12)
Sterling interbank rates Bank of England
Questions
- Using data from the Bank of England (see link above), chart two or three LIBOR rates against Bank rate from 2007 to the present day.
- For what reason would individuals and firms lose from banks manipulating LIBOR rates?
- Why would LIBOR manipulation be more ‘effective’ if banks colluded in their submissions about their interest rates?
- Why might the Bank of England and the government have been quite keen for the LIBOR to have been manipulated downwards in 2008?
- To what extent was the LIBOR rigging scandal an example of the problem of asymmetric information?
- In the light of the LIBOR rigging scandal, should universal banks be split into separate investment and retail banks, rather than erecting some firewall around their retail banking arm?
- What are the arguments for and against making attempts to manipulate LIBOR rates a criminal offences?
Let’s face it – no-one likes paying tax! After all, to see your monthly pay decline by £1000 through taxation and national insurance has got to hurt. Yet, taxation and national insurance contributions are essential sources of government revenue to finance benefits and public and merit goods.
However, with so much attention given to the UK’s ‘culture of dependency’, many people are increasingly angry with having to pay so much in taxation to see it being spent by the government on individuals who in some cases choose not to work and at the same time seeing other rich people paying so little in taxation. The increase in the top rate of tax received a lot of coverage. Although it did make the tax system more progressive, there were many concerns that it would lead to lower growth, a lack of innovation and enterprise and increased tax evasion and avoidance, as the super-rich were being hit with phenomenal tax bills. The post on the 50p income tax available here is worth looking at again to think about the effect that taxes have on incentives.
The issue of tax avoidance is by no means new, but with a large budget deficit in the UK, tax avoidance by the super-rich has become something that everyone has an opinion on. The average household has seen its income squeezed more and more, as the government continues its efforts to cut the deficit. The fact that the super rich are avoiding sometimes millions in taxation, while the average household struggles to pay even the basic rate of tax, creates a rather contentious issue. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, has said that the basic rate of tax could be cut by 2p in the pound if tax avoidance came to an end. He commented to the BBC’s Sunday Politics Programme that:
‘We have to make sure that everybody, especially the rich and famous, are paying their fair share of tax…These sorts of schemes that save wealthy people potentially tens of millions of pounds in tax, they are paid for by everybody else… If we could narrow the tax gap in this country by a quarter we could reduce income tax for every basic rate payer by 2p in the pound.’
This would clearly have some very positive effects on some of the poorest people living in the UK.
There is a variety of tax avoidance schemes available and the one receiving the most attention at present is the Jersey-based K2 scheme, which Jimmy Carr and others are thought to be using. The Public Accounts Committee will be reporting on the problem of using private companies to pay salaries, as a means of avoiding income tax and national insurance contributions.
If tax avoidance could be stopped, or at least reduced, then not only could basic rate tax payers benefit, but it might go some way to cutting the budget deficit, giving the government more flexibility in stimulating the economy. According to HMRC, tax avoidance and evasion cost the economy some £42 billion – enough to pay off one-third of Britain’s budget deficit.
The following articles consider the problem of tax avoidance and then try answering the questions on the issue of taxation.
Five-point plan to curb tax cheating by big firms and super-rich Guardian (27/6/12)
Stop tax dodgers or there will be ‘riots on the streets’, warns top lawyer designing new anti-avoidance rules Mail Online, Julian Gavaghan (26/6/12)
Danny Alexander describes aggressive tax avoidance as ‘morally repugnant’ Guardian, Patrick Wintour (24/6/12)
Basic tax ‘could be cut by 2p’ if avoidance ended BBC News(24/6/12)
Danny Alexander says tax avoidance ‘adds 2p in every £1 to basic tax rate’ Independent, Oliver Wright (24/6/12)
Make tax returns public, urges peer The Press Association (28/6/12)
Tax officials reveal scale of probe Financial Times, Jim Pickard (27/6/12)
Questions
- What are the key principles of a good tax system?
- Explain how taxation affects the incentive to work?
- What is the difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance?
- Using indifference analysis, illustrate the effect of a cut in the basic rate of income tax. How does it affect the decision to work more or less? You should consider the income and substitution effects in your answer and which rate of tax (if any) an individual is paying.
- Why is tax avoidance of such concern at the moment? Think about the current state of the economy.
- What are taxes and national insurance contributions used to pay for?
- To what extent do you think tax avoidance is a natural consequence of any tax system?
Recently there have been calls from business leaders and Conservative politicians to scrap the UK’s 50% income tax rate, which is paid on taxable incomes over £150,000. The 50% income tax rate is thus paid by top earners, who comprise around just 1% of taxpayers.
And yet the government receives about 30% of income tax revenue from this 1% – and this was before the introduction of the 50% rate in April 2010. (In fact, with the marginal national insurance rate of 2%, top earners are paying an effective marginal rate of 52%.)
One argument used by those who favour reducing the 50% rate is that the rich would pay more income tax, not less. There are four reasons given for this. The first is that people would be encouraged to work harder and/or seek promotion if they knew they would keep more of any rise in income. The second is that fewer rich people would be encouraged to leave the country or to relocate their businesses abroad. The third is that more people would be encouraged to work in or set up businesses in the UK. The fourth is that there would be less temptation to evade taxes by not declaring all income earned or to find clever ways of avoiding tax.
These arguments were put forward in the 1980s by Art Laffer, an adviser to President Reagan. His famous ‘Laffer curve’ (see Economics (8th edition) Box 10.3 or Economics (7th edition) Box 10.4) illustrated that tax revenues are maximised at a particular tax rate. The idea behind the Laffer curve is very simple. At a tax rate of 0%, tax revenue will be zero – but so too at a rate of 100%, since no-one would work if they had to pay all their income in taxes. As the tax rate rises from 0%, so tax revenue would rise. And so too, as the tax rate falls from 100%, the tax rate would rise. It follows that there will be some tax rate between 0% and 100% that maximises tax revenue.
Those arguing that a cut in the top rate of income tax would increase tax revenue are arguing that the 50% rate is beyond the peak of the Laffer curve. But this is an empirical issue. In other words, to assess the argument you would need to look at the evidence as, theoretically, the peak of the Laffer curve could be below or above 50%. Indeed, some argue that the peak is more likely to be at around 75%.
The following podcasts and articles consider the arguments. As you will see, the authors are not all agreed! Consider carefully their arguments and try to identify any flaws in their analysis.
Update
On 27 June 2012, Arthur Laffer appeared on the BBC Today Programme to discuss the Laffer curve and its implications for UK income tax policy. You can hear it from the link below
Podcasts
Should the 50p tax rate be ditched? BBC Today Programme, John Redwood and Paul Johnson (3/3/12)
Arthur Laffer: Tax rate should ‘provide for growth’ BBC Today Programme (27/6/12)
Articles
Where’s the High Point on the Laffer Curve? And Where Are We? Business Insider, Angry bear Blog (3/3/12)
Tax cuts: we can have our cake and eat it The Telegraph, Ruth Porter (22/2/12)
‘Scrap the 50p tax rate’ say 500 UK entrepreneurs Management Today, Rebecca Burn-Callander (1/3/12)
The Laffer Curve Appears in the UK Forbes, Tim Worstall (22/2/12)
Memo to 50p tax trashers: Laffer Curve peaks at over 75 per cent Left Foot Forward, Alex Hern (1/3/12)
Questions
- Explain how a cut in income tax could lead to an increase in tax revenue.
- Distinguish between the income effect and the substitution effect of a tax cut. Which would have to be bigger if a tax cut were to increase tax revenue?
- If, in a given year, the top rate of tax were raised and tax revenue fell, would this prove that the economy was now past the peak of the Laffer curve?
- What would cause the Laffer curve to shift/change shape? To what extent could the government affect the shape of the Laffer curve?
- If the government retains the 50% top tax rate, what can it do to increase the revenue earned from people paying the top rate?
- What other objectives might the government have for having a high marginal income tax rate on top earners?
- Investigate the marginal income tax and national insurance (social protection) rates in other countries. How progressive are UK income taxes compared with those in other countries?
Academic research is encouraged by universities. Indeed, the number and quality of research publications is the most important criterion for promotion in many universities.
Periodically university research in the UK is publicly assessed. The latest assessment is known as the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and will be completed in 2014. Most research that will be considered by the REF is published in peer-reviewed journals. Most of these journals are subscription based. Universities pay large amounts of money in subscriptions.
In recent years there has been much criticism by both academics and universities about the high cost of such subscriptions. In a movement dubbed the Academic Spring, pressure has mounted for journal articles to be made available free of charge – i.e. on open access.
The government too has been concerned that the results of publicly-funded research has been disappearing behind ‘paywalls’ and hence not available free to people outside the universities which subscribe to such journals. Indeed, no single university can afford licences for all the 25,000 peer-reviewed journals currently being published. As a result, the government set up a committee under the chair of Professor Janet Finch to examine alternative ways of making research more accessible. The committee has just published its report.
It advocates an expansion of open-access journals:
The principle that the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain is a compelling one, and fundamentally unanswerable…
Instead of relying on subscription revenues provided by or on behalf of readers, most [open-access journals] charge a fee to authors…before an article is published. Access for readers is then free of charge, immediately on publication, and with very few restrictions on use and re-use.
Under this model, universities would essentially pay to have their academics’ articles published rather than paying to purchase the journal. Alternatively, research councils could fund the publication of articles based on research already funded by them.
Many people go further. They argue that authors ought to be able to have their published research in any journal made freely available, after an embargo period, through their university’s website.
So is the current pricing model the best for encouraging research and for disseminating its findings? Or is open access a better model – and if so, of what form? Or would it discourage publishers and lead, in the end, to less being published or to a less rigorous peer review process? The questions are ones of pricing, incentives, choices and investment – the questions that economists are qualified to consider.
Articles
Open access may require funds to be rationed Times Higher Education, Paul Jump (21/6/12)
Set science free from publishers’ paywalls New Scientist, Stephen Curry (19/6/12)
Scientists must make research an open book Independent, Martin Hickman (18/6/12)
Report calls on government to back open access science BBC News, Pallab Ghosh (19/6/12)
Open access is the future of academic publishing, says Finch report Guardian, Alok Jha (19/6/12)
Open access to science – its implications discussed in UK raport ZME Science (19/6/12)
UK move to ‘open access’ in publishing Phys.Org, Justin Norrie (20/6/12)
Report
Finch Group Report: Overview Research Information Network (June 2012)
Finch Group Report: Executive Summary Research Information Network (June 2012)
Finch Group Report: Full Report Research Information Network (June 2012)
Questions
- Explain the difference between the ‘gold’ and ‘green’ models of open-access journal article publishing?
- What externalities are involved in journal publication? What are the implications of this for socially efficient pricing?
- How could journal publication be made profitable under an open-access system?
- What are the incentive effects for (a) academics and (b) universities of ranking journals? Does the REF, whereby research articles are judged on their own merits, overcome problems of ranking journals?
- Does the existence of journal rankings allow the top journals in each discipline to maintain a position of market power? How is this likely to impact on journal or article pricing?
- How would university finances be affected by a move towards gold open access journals (a) in the short term; (b) in the long term?
- Would it be in universities’ interests to produce their own open-access journals?
A campaign to introduce a tax on disposable plastic bags in England has been launched by various pressure groups, including The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Keep Britain Tidy, the Marine Conservation Society and Surfers Against Sewage. Plastic bags, they maintain, litter streets and the countryside and pollute the seas, where they cause considerable damage to marine life.