ABILITY-TO-PAY PRINCIPLE: A principle of taxation in which taxes are based on the income or resource-ownership ability of people to pay the tax. The income tax collected by our friends at the Internal Revenue Service is one of the most common taxes that seeks to abide by the ability-to-pay principle. In theory, the income tax system is set up such that people with greater incomes pay more taxes. Proportional and progressive taxes follow this ability-to-pay principle, while regressive taxes, such as sales taxes and Social Security taxes, don't.

     See also | benefit principle | tax | income | public goods | progressive tax | regressive tax | proportional tax | circular flow |

ABILITY-TO-PAY PRINCIPLE, AmosWEB GLOSS*arama, http://www.AmosWEB.com, AmosWEB LLC, 2000-2022. [Accessed: September 24, 2022].

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The negative slope of aggregate demand curve, reflecting the inverse relation between the price level and aggregate expenditures on real production, is attributable to three primary effects--real-balance effect, interest-rate effect, and net-export effect.

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