hey how you doing econ students this is Mr Clifford welcome to ACDC econ right now we're going to talk about taxes the government takes efficiency breaks deep in the heart of taxes now you've learned about supply and demand and consumer surplus and producer Surplus it's time to put all those things together and talk about taxes a per unit tax or an excise tax is a tax on producer so right here let's have the Supply demand for some random product let's say milk Paul why are we doing milk no more milk so we've got the supply demand for milk and let's say the equilibrium is right here at $3 if the government put a per unit exsiz tax on milk of $2 per unit that would cause a supply curve to shift to the left that would cause Supply to shift to the left but there's some more details that you actually have to watch out for as you can see the price the consumers pay is now $4 but I want you to notice the price didn't go up to five right it was a $2 taag and the price before was three but the new price isn't five that's because the consumers and the producers pay a portion of this tax the price the consumers pay is now right here $4 but the producers don't get that $4 remember they have to pay a $2 tax so they don't get $4 they get only $2 the way you can spot this is by looking at the vertical distance between these two Supply curves that tells you the per unit amount of the tax so that vertical distance is $2 and so the producers only get to keep $2 of the $4 consumers pay where does the other $2 go well to the government that $2 tax times the new quantity of 80 represents the $160 of tax revenue that goes to the government and the reason why there's this tax wedge is because now there's three people involved with this transaction before the tax it was just consumers and producers but now it's consumers producers and the government so the total expenditures or spending on milk is $4 * 80 that big box is spent total on milk and this right here the $160 2 * 80 is how much the government gets to keep and the other $160 right there is how much the producers get to keep of the money consumer spent now let's ask a new question what happened to consumer surplus when there was a shift in the supply and the price went up remember consumer surplus is the difference between what people are willing to pay for something what they actually did pay so it's this triangle right here before the tax after the tax it's this triangle right here right when the price goes up it screws over consumer producer Surplus also got smaller right when the supply ship to the left and the price that producers got was only two that producer Surplus is right there so the consumer surplus is there producer Surplus is there and that right there is the government tax revenue so what about this Old Triangle of consumer and produc surplus that used to exist well that's called Dead weight loss if the government taxes something like milk and the quantity the society actually wants the socially optimal quantity is 100 and they tax it it's going to decrease efficiency it's going to cause a decrease in total Surplus so taxes on some products will lead to to inefficiency let's try it again except this time I've changed the slope of the demand curve I've made it more inelastic as you can see the original price was 12 and the original quantity is 12 then the government came in and put a tax causing the supply curve to shift to the left now I want you to answer these questions pause the video and I'll go over the first question is the tax per unit to figure it out it's the vertical distance between the supply curves so this is a $3 tax don't assume it's a $2 tax because that's what happened to Price Right Price went up $2 remember consumers and producers share this tax the tax revenue is $30 it's a $3 tax per unit times the 10 quantity which is that box right there the total amount of tax revenue paid by consumers is $20 this is the $2 more that consumers pay per unit times the 10 unit output since the total tax revenue is $30 then the tax that the producers must be paying must be 10 bucks The Producers used to get 12 and now they only get 11 and so they get $1 less than before 1 time 10 is the $10 of total tax revenue the producers pay notice that the consumers and the producers do not share this tax equally it's because the demand curve is relatively inelastic compared to the supply curve total expenditures or spending at the tax is the $14 time 10 or $140 the total revenue to firms is how much firms get to keep well they don't get to keep $14 per unit remember they only get to keep $11 because the $3 per unit goes to the government so $1 time 10 gives you $110 Revenue that goes to firms bonus round it's really easy to get confused by about this idea of producers and consumers sharing a tax you would think that if there's a tax then consumers just pay all of it but as you can see from the graph that's not the case to help you understand this concept I'm going to show you some graphs so let me get out of the way and I'll show you what's going on right now you're looking at the demand curve with different elasticities you've got perfectly inelastic relatively inelastic unit elastic relatively elastic and perfectly elastic now what I'm going to do is put a supply curve on each one of these demand curves that is unit elastic and I'm going to put the same per unit tax on every single one of these demand curs the boxes right here are the total tax revenue that goes to the government and it shows you who's paying the tax when the demand is perfectly inelastic then the consumers pay all of the tax producers pay none of it when the demand is relatively inelastic the consumers pay the majority of the tax just like the question we saw earlier when the demand and the supply have the same elasticity then consumers and producers share the tax equally when the demand is more elastic than the supply then producers is going to pay more of the tax and when the demand is horizontal or perfectly elastic the producers are going to pay all of that tax the best way to remember all this stuff is just draw the graph show the different ideas of elastic El elastic and draw that tax revenue box then you can look at it and it tells you who pays the majority of the tax dang Mr Clifford this is awesome hey I hope this video helped you understand taxes take a look at the next video that's going to talk about consumer choice and utility maximization also take a look at my review apps for the AP exam all right till next time