Measures of The Excess Burden
The cost of a distortion is usually measured as the amount that would have to be paid to the people affected by its supply, the greater the excess burden. The second is the tax rate: as a general rule, the excess burden of a tax increases with the square of the tax rate.
The average cost of funds is the total cost of distortions divided by the total revenue collected by a government. In contrast, the marginal cost of funds (MCF) is the size of the distortion that accompanied the last unit of revenue raised (i.e. the rate of change of distortion with respect to revenue). In most cases, the MCF increases as the amount of tax collected increases.
The standard position in economics is that the costs in a cost-benefit analysis for any tax-funded project should be increased according to the marginal cost of funds, because that is close to the deadweight loss that will be experienced if the project is added to the budget, or to the deadweight loss removed if the project is removed from the budget.
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