A tax on robots? Some food for thought

摘要

Tax administrations face new and ever greater challenges. Some data collected show that the use of industrial robots has been increasing since 1990; therefore their entry in our life is not more a fantasy and it will generate relevant changes in legal, economic and social systems. As far as tax policy is concerned, if robots have a high elasticity of substitution with labour a fall in tax revenue is expected, as labour taxes represent a significant portion of tax revenue. In addition, since robotization seems to jeopardise especially routine and low skilled workers, governments need growing public resources to be invested in education and training system. Starting from these premises, the paper deals with the possible design and the effects of the introduction of a robot tax.