Optimal Income Taxation With Quasi-Linear Preferences Revisited

Properties of the optimal income tax for quasi-linear in leisure preferences are studied. With utilitarian or maxi-min objectives, closed-form solutions are obtained. Bunching occurs over intervals where the second-order incentive condition is binding. Whether this occurs depends solely on the skill distribution. The patterns of consumption and tax rates in the nonbunched range are independent of whether the second-order incentive constraints are binding. Bunching at the bottom can also occur if a non-negative constraint on incomes is binding for some households. The pattern of marginal tax rates depends on the skill distribution and whether it is truncated.     

Optimal Age-Specific Income Taxation

This paper studies optimal earnings taxation in a three‐period life‐cycle model where taxes can be differentiated according to age. Agents choose their level of education when young and their retirement age when old. I study the problem both without and with borrowing constraints. It is shown that, without borrowing constraints, a first‐best optimum can be decentralized by setting a zero tax rate in the third period and a first‐period tax lower than the second‐period one. With borrowing constraints, the first best can no longer be achieved. The gap between the first‐ and second‐period tax rates is larger, while the third‐period tax rate is generally different from zero.     

Heterogeneous Preferences, Education Expenditures and Income Distribution

This paper introduces heterogeneous preferences to a growth model which incorporates human capital, accumulated through either public or private education. The implications of heterogeneous preferences for income and its distribution are the focus of the paper. Public education expenditure is determined through a voting mechanism where the median preference rather than median income household is the decisive voter. The paper extends the work of Glomm and Ravikumar (1992) and shows first, that heterogeneous preferences increase income inequality in the private education model and second, public education can overcome the added heterogeneity and reduce income inequality. The results strengthen the arguments for public education as a redistributive mechanism.     

Optimal Piecewise Linear Income Taxation

Given its significance in practice, piecewise linear taxation has received relatively little attention in the literature. This paper offers a simple and transparent analysis of its main characteristics. We fully characterize optimal tax parameters for the cases in which budget sets are convex and nonconvex respectively. A numerical analysis of a discrete version of the model shows the circumstances under which each of these cases will hold as a global optimum. We find that, given plausible parameter values and wage distributions, the globally optimal tax system is convex, and marginal rate progressivity increases with rising inequality.     

Optimal Income Taxation and International Labour Mobility

This paper considers how a linear income tax should be set optimally when individuals are internationally mobile. The optimum tax analysis is founded on a social welfare function where each individual counts in the social welfare according to residence time in the home country. The discussion of the optimal income tax is organized from two perspectives. The first relates to the optimum income tax when a uniform lump sum transfer is used, while the second concerns the optimal rate of tax when a transfer is used which depends on time of residence in the taxing jurisdiction.     

Comparative Statics of Optimal Nonlinear Income Taxation with a Publicly Provided Input and a Nonlinear Production Technology

Comparative static properties of the solution to an optimal nonlinear income tax problem are provided for a model in which the government both designs a redistributive income tax schedule and provides a public input for a nonlinear production technology. These assumptions imply that wage rates are endogenous. The endogeneity of the wages necessitates taking account of general equilibrium effects of changes in the parameters of the model that are not present when the technology is linear.     

Optimal Income Taxation with Endogenous Human Capital

This paper augments the theory of optimal linear income taxation by taking into account human capital accumulation as a dimension of labor supply. The distribution of earning potentials is endogenous because agents differ in the ability to learn. Taxation affects utilization rates of human capital through labor supply responses. The costs of education that are not deductible from the income tax distort the learning decision as well. We show theoretically that the trade‐off between efficiency and equity is worsened. Quantitative analysis shows that the distortionary costs of taxation increase substantially when human capital formation is endogenous.     

Optimal Taxation with a Trade-off Between Income and Children

This paper explores the implications of endogenous fertility for optimal redistributive taxation in the presence of a trade-off between labour income and children. The labour supply is a decreasing function of the desired quantity and quality of children. Since children enter into the parent's budget constraint in a nonlinear form, their shadow prices are directly distorted by the income tax rate. It is shown that the substitution effects of the income tax rate on the quantity and quality of children cannot be signed uniquely although the effect on labour supply is negative. The aggregate substitution effect of the income tax rate on the quantity of children plays an important role in the determination of the signs of the income tax and child subsidy rates at a Rawlsian or Benthamite social welfare optimum.
JEL Classification Numbers: H21, J13, J22     

Optimal Income Taxation and Public Good Provision with Endogenous Interest Groups

This paper studies public goods provision when agents differ in earning abilities as well as preferences. Heterogeneity in skills makes redistribution desirable and generates an equity-efficiency trade-off. If tax revenues are devoted to a public good, this trade-off is affected in such a way that income transfers are less desirable. High-skilled individuals thus have an incentive to exaggerate their preferences for public goods. Analogously, low-skilled individuals lobby against public good provision. A requirement of collective incentive compatibility eliminates these biases. It implies that income transfers are increased whenever a public good is provided and are decreased otherwise.     

Optimal Capital Income Taxation with Means‐tested Benefits

This paper studies the interaction between capital income taxation and a means‐tested age pension. Our results document that the existence of a social insurance program financed from general revenue puts an upward pressure on the optimal tax rate. We also show that there is a negative relation between taper (benefit‐reduction) and optimal capital income tax rates. The potential welfare gain from optimizing capital taxation in the presence of a universal retirement transfer system is relatively higher. However, when the transfer is substantially means tested, the gain is lower, because the means test effectively operates as a tax on retirement capital.     

Simple Rules for the Optimal Taxation of International Capital Income

In this paper we reconcile and extend previous results on the collectively optimal taxation of international investment income. The “weighted average” rule of Horst (1980), for example, is shown to rest on unattractive assumptions on the set of instruments available, ruling out any need for distorting taxes. The principal contribution is to establish a new and strikingly simple weighted average rule — encompassing the other key result in this area — for the general case in which lump-sum taxes are unavailable, the ability to tax pure profits is perhaps restricted and distorting taxes on both domestic and border-crossing capital income are optimally deployed.     

Optimal Nonlinear Redistributive Taxation and Public Good Provision in an Economy with Veblen Effects

This paper deals with the consequences of the assumption of negatively interdependent preferences for the shape of the optimal nonlinear income tax and the efficient level of public good provision in a setting where the agents' market ability is private information. The analysis points out that the terms added in the tax formulas due to the presence of Veblen effects might justify a reduction in the optimal marginal tax rates faced by the different individuals. Also, the desirability of negative marginal tax rates cannot be ruled out. With respect to the issue of the optimal level of public good provision, I derive a modified Samuelson rule and highlight the fact that the Veblen‐based part of the formula might require to distort downwards the efficient level of public good provision.     

Heterogeneous Preferences for Community Recycling Programs

This paper examines household preferences for community recycling programs, which have both public and private good dimensions. The data come from a survey conducted in Seattle (WA) which elicited stated preference-contingent ratings for different recycling programs relative to status quo, with experimental variation in the overall community recycling rate achieved and expected household cost. The recycling rate is interpreted as capturing the public benefits of recycling programs and constitutes the most common measure used by policy agencies for setting waste management objectives and evaluating policy initiatives. The analysis begins with fixed parameter models that explore different ways of handling rating data and mixed logit estimations that capture household preference heterogeneity both within and across different recycling programs. This analysis yields unique estimates of willingness to pay for an increase in the community recycling rate. Predicted individual-specific utility parameters are then regressed on household background information to explicitly examine the nature of preference heterogeneity. Overall, this paper generates interpretable policy-relevant insights into the public and private good dimensions of community recycling programs.     

Optimal Indirect and Capital Taxation

We consider an environment in which agents' skills are private information and follow arbitrary stochastic processes. We prove that it is typically Pareto optimal for an individual's marginal benefit of investing in capital to exceed his marginal cost of doing so. This wedge is consistent with a positive tax on capital income. We also prove that it is Pareto optimal for the marginal rate of substitution between any two consumption goods to equal the marginal rate of transformation. This lack of a wedge is consistent with uniform taxation of consumption goods within a period.     

Income Taxation with Labor Responses

When incomes are exogenously given, U. Jakobsson ( Journal of Public Economics s 5 (1976), 161–168) proved that a progressive tax structure always reduces inequality. We investigate the implications for effective progression of relaxing the assumption of exogenous incomes when individuals have the same preferences but different talents. We extend the standard result and conclude that it is generally impossible to disentangle the respective contributions to inequality reduction of the tax schedule and agents' preferences. For a linear tax schedule to result in less unequally distributed incomes it is sufficient that the elasticity of labor supply be nonincreasing in exogenous income and nondecreasing in productivities. The latter condition proves to be necessary and sufficient when the tax schedule is proportional.     

税收、收入不平等和内生经济增长

企业家(通过金融中介)从家庭借贷来支撑创新。二者在企业家的努力不为外人所见的情形下双方签订信用合同分享创新带来的垄断利润(即蛋糕)。两个有代表性经济人(企业家和家庭)的存在允许人们在内生经济增长模型里研究收入不平等。本文研究发现,企业家分配份额的增加一开始会提升增长速度,但是过了一定值后会拉低增长速度;而该份额的增加一直拉大企业家和工人间的收入差距。所以降低企业家获得的蛋糕的份额的分配改革可缩小收入差距。提高企业家来自创新的收入的税率将降低他们的努力程度,从而降低增长速度,但是该税率的提高有助于降低收入不平等程度。存款收入的税率提高尽管不会改变企业家的努力程度,但是也会降低经济增长速度,而且不会降低收入不平等(如果工人有一定比例的存款)。对于劳动收入(工人工资)的税率增加会加剧工人和企业家间的收入不平等,但对经济增长速度没有影响。     

Taxation Reform and Income Distribution in Australia

This article contains an analysis of the effects of changes in the existing tax mix on the distribution of income in Australia. Shifts from direct to indirect taxes, similar to ‘Option C’ in the Government's Draft White Paper on tax reform, are considered. The general equilibrium effects of the policy changes are analysed using an extended version of the ORANI model of the Australian economy. The Shorrocks I₀ index is then used to identify the sources of inequality in the pre- and post-change distributions. The results are based on data from the ABS Income and Housing Survey for 1981–82.     

Optimal Utilitarian Taxation and Horizontal Equity

We impose a horizontal equity restriction on the problem of finding the optimal utilitarian tax mix. The horizontal equity constraint requires that individuals with the same ability have to pay the same amount of taxes regardless of their preferences for leisure. Contrary to normal findings, we find that a good that is complementary to leisure can be encouraged by the tax system and that a good that normally should be discouraged by the tax system can be subsidized even if the economy is composed of only two private commodities plus leisure. Also, the marginal effective tax rate can be different from zero at the top of the ability distribution when the tax mix obeys the horizontal equity constraint.     

Black Markets and Optimal Evadable Taxation

In a simple model of evadable indirect taxation, some surprises emerge. Because of a 'market-thinning' effect of high prices, high taxes induce multiple equilibria (low-price black markets and high-price legal markets). Further, evadability introduces a bifurcation to optimal taxation: For less effective tax administrations, the optimal tax system follows a 'cash cow' pattern, with one sector bearing all of the tax; but for relatively effective administrations, the optimum follows a slightly modified Ramsey rule. This discontinuity results from the mathematics of evasion incentives, and may help explain tax reforms commonly seen over the course of economic development