Decide whether the following tax policy statements are True, False or Uncertain. Explain your reasoning.
a. The fact that aggregate sales do not change much when cigarette taxes are increased allows us to conclude that cigarette companies near most of the burden of the cigarette tax.
b. Social Security is a regressive program because you only have to pay social security taxes on income up to a maximum cap amount per year.
c. Most public finance economists think gasoline taxes are good because the "excess burden" of such taxes is low since consumption of gasoline does not change much when the gas tax rises.
d. The economic theory of property taxation states that when a new (and new permanent) property tax is imposed, only future owners of the property bear the burden of the tax.
e. In evaluating the economic efficiency of various commodity taxes, it is not safe to assume that the excess burden of a tax is measured well by the total amount of tax revenue raised by that tax.