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Does It Matter For Tax Incidence If The Same Amount Of Tax Is Imposed On Sellers?

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Economics 1005: Economics 1 Midterm assignment 2009-2010 Assignment: Does it matter for tax incidence if the same amount of tax is imposed on buyers or sellers? If not, then what does matter? Introduction: Throughout my essay I intend to discuss how a tax on sellers or buyers affects the proportion of the tax each one will pay, this overall issue known as tax incidence will be discussed. The effects of elasticity (both perfect inelastic and perfect elastic) of demand and supply will be discussed and how they affect the division of tax between the buyer and seller. A conclusion will then be drawn up to evaluate the information discussed and a bibliography page will be drawn up to reveal the sources I have gathered some of my …show more content…

This fact causes the demand curve to shift downward and become the new D- tax on buyers demand curve (red line in Figure 2). Now the equilibrium quantity has decreased to 325 million packs per year, this correlates to a new price buyers have to pay of €4.00 while the price received by sellers of €2.50. It is important at this point to explain exactly what these two prices can show us, we can say that when any transaction is taxed there will be two different prices; one paid by the buyers which will include their share of the imposed tax and another price received by the sellers which will exclude their share of the tax they have to pay. So here we can say that the €4.00 paid by the buyers includes their payment towards the €1.50 tax and the received price sellers get of €2.50 excludes their payment of the tax. Form the equilibrium price before tax of €3.00 we can see that the division of the tax is that Buyers have paid €1.00 of the tax and sellers paying the other €0.50[2]. Now we can safely say that for tax incidence is does not matter whether the law says that the seller pays or that the buyer pays, as we look at [1] & [2] and see that whether the tax was imposed on buyers or sellers the end result of the division of tax was the same. So we can conclude that the effects of tax do not result from which side of the market the tax is imposed on (Demand side for tax on buyers and Supply side for tax on sellers), but are created from the size of the gap between the

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