The recent and justly influential report of the Meade Committee on the reform of the UK tax system (see Meade, 1978 ) has highlighted the fact that the effects of taxation on patterns of resource allocation are frequently complex and difficult to identify. Nowhere is this more true than in the field of natural resources taxation, where the general complexity is often compounded by the interactions of several different types of tax. Resource-based industries are frequently subject not only to conventional profits taxes but also to royalties, revenue taxes, excess profits taxes and a variety of others, often with rather complex depreciation provisions. The overall structure of these taxes tends to be a matter of historical accident rather than conscious policy, but in recent years economists have argued that it should be conceived as an instrument for controlling the manner and rate of depletion of existing stocks and the search for new supplies (e.g. Meade, 1975 , p. 114 ff.). The evaluation of such a proposal requires both (1) an understanding of the way in which taxation alters the pattern of depletion of natural resources, and (2) an analysis of why a government may want to alter the rate of depletion from that which would occur in the market economy. 1
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