This paper argues that Pareto improvements based on harmonizing tax reforms expressed in terms of the divergence between actual and optimal tax structures and over/under provision of public goods require the use of ‘pseudo-optimal’ taxes instead of optimal ones. ‘Pseudo-optimal’ taxes are defined as those obtained using the optimal tax formulas but evaluated at any arbitrary initial tax structure. Within this context the paper reconfirms existing results showing that tax harmonization emerges as a strong policy instrument in achieving a potential Pareto-improvement.

中文翻译：

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关于商品税收的统一和公共物品的提供

本文认为，基于协调税收改革的帕累托改进，表现为实际和最优税收结构之间的差异以及公共产品的过度/不足提供，需要使用“伪最优”税收而不是最优税收。“伪最优”税收被定义为使用最优税收公式获得但在任意初始税收结构下进行评估的税收。在此背景下，本文再次确认了现有结果，表明税收协调成为实现潜在帕累托改进的有力政策工具。