Imperfect Tax Compliance and the Optimal Provision of Public Goods

Our aim in this paper is to investigate whether the presence of imperfect income tax compliance affects the optimal provision of public goods within a framework in which public expenditure is financed by a general income tax that also accomplishes redistributive goals. We first derive the income tax structure, and then a generalized Samuelson rule. We argue that, under imperfect income tax compliance, it is desirable to distort public–good supply downwards, in the sense that the sum of marginal rates of substitution between public and private consumption must exceed their marginal rate of transformation.