Optimal top marginal tax rates under income splitting for couples

This paper provides formulas for optimal top marginal tax rates when couples are taxed according to income splitting between spouses, consumption is taxed, and the skill distribution is unbounded. Optimal top marginal income tax rates are computed for Germany using a dataset that includes the tax returns of all German top taxpayers. We find that the optimal top marginal tax rate converges to about 2/3 and convergence obtains at income levels that are substantially higher than those currently subject to the actual top tax rate.     

论新形式下的企业所得税纳税筹划

企业所得税在企业纳税活动中占有重要的地位，且具有很大的税收筹划空间，本文从“两税合并”的政策背景入手，分析了新形式下的企业所得税纳税筹划的新思路与方法，并提出了筹划工作过程中应注意的问题和改进建议。     

Optimal marginal and average income taxation under maximin

Using the Mirrlees optimal income tax model under maximin, we derive fairly mild conditions for a decreasing marginal tax rate throughout the skill distribution with no bunching, a strictly concave tax function in income and a single-peaked average tax schedule. Assuming additive preferences and an isoelastic disutility of labor function, these tax profiles are implied by aggregate skills that are non-decreasing with the skill level. If preferences are quasilinear in leisure or in consumption, these tax profiles are also obtained under a large set of skill distributions.     

Decomposable measures of income tax progressivity

A class of decomposable income tax progressivity indices is defined by using a family of generalized entropy measures. For demonstration, changes in income tax progressivity in the United States are studied over time.     

On the existence of an implementable optimal income tax

Summary. This paper discusses the existence of an optimal income tax and distinguishes itself from the previous articles in two respects. In previous papers, the self selection condition was not necessarily consistent with the individual budget constraint. Furthermore, implementability in previous papers was implicit in individual ability, rather than individual income, as the basis of the tax function. We offer a different concept of the self selection conditions: Anti Normal Envy that is consistent with the individual budget constraint and that we show to be equivalent to the competitive equilibrium under a tax function based on income. We then establish the existence of an implementable optimal income tax.Received: 9 December 2000, Revised: 5 August 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: H21, C62, D59.Correspondence to: Jun IritaniThe authors are grateful to an anonymous referee of this journal whose suggestions were instrumental to our revision of the paper, and to Professors Takao Kataoka, Tomoyuki Kamo, Tetsuya Kishimoto, and Mototsugu Fukushige, and the members of the Kobe-Osaka Joint Seminar in Mathematical Economics, for their invaluable comments.     

Intermediate goods and the incidence of the corporation income tax

Intermediate goods are introduced into a general equilibrium model of the incidence of the corporation income tax. Several theoretical conclusions about the role of such goods are established. Many well-known propositions about the incidence of the corporation income tax, emanating from models with only final goods, need to be modified. Estimates from U.S. data suggest that if intermediate goods are left out results will be misleading, especially if these goods are a relatively large sector in the economy and possibilities of substituting capital for labor in their production, and of substituting them for other productive factors in the final-good industries, are rather limited.     

Optimal consumption under income uncertainty: An example and a conjecture

This paper demonstrates that, under certain circumstances, the optimal consumption strategy of an individual with constant absolute risk-aversion, facing income uncertainty, is linear in wealth. Comparative static results are derived, and the paper concludes with a conjecture about other classes of utility functions.     

Accounting for the family in European income tax systems

Tax systems are expected to achieve many things at once andthis paper discusses the trade-offs involved in attempting toreconcile conflicting aims. It surveys the various instrumentsthat are used to take account of marriage and the presence ofchildren and describes the current systems in the 15 EuropeanUnion countries. The impact of alternative tax treatments ofthe family 'borrowed' from other countries is examined for theUK, using the tax-benefit microsimulation model, POLIMOD. Thepaper explores the implications of the alternatives for thetax paid by families of different types and for the work incentivesof individuals in different family situations.     

Hierarchical design and enforcement of income tax policies

A hierarchical model of tax compliance is studied in which the government selects a tax policy and then delegates the responsibility to collect taxes to the IRS. There is a fixed distribution of income in the economy. Individuals differ by their income, which is known niether to the government nor to the IRS. We completely characterize the solution to the IRS's revenue-maximizing problem. When taxpayers are risk neutral, the optimal auditing policy divides the reported incomes into at most three groups. We show that the government provides a smaller budget to the IRS than the IRS would wish.     

The direct incidence of corporate income tax on wages

A stylised model is provided to show how the direct effect of corporate income tax on wages can be identified in a bargaining framework using cross-company variation in tax liabilities, conditional on value added per employee. Using data on 55,082 companies located in nine European countries over the period 1996–2003, we estimate the long run elasticity of the wage bill with respect to taxation to be ?0.093. Evaluated at the mean, this implies that an exogenous rise of $1 in tax would reduce the wage bill by 49 cents. Only a weak evidence of a difference for multinational companies is found.     

On measuring violations of the progressive principle in income tax systems

Kakwani and Lambert (Eur J Polit Econ 14(2):369–380, 1998) state three axioms which should be respected by an equitable tax system. Using the Atkinson–Plotnick–Kakwani re-ranking indexes of taxes, tax rates, and post-tax incomes, calculated with respect to the ranking of pre-tax income distribution, they then propose a measurement system to evaluate the negative influences that axiom violations exert on the redistributive effect of taxes. In this paper, we reconsider the way Kakwani and Lambert measure violations of their second axiom, which concerns the re-ranking of tax rates. We construct a non-negative index which is strictly faithful to Kakwani and Lambert’s commands; we show that the Authors’ measure does not exactly fit the statements made in their second axiom. Both Kakwani and Lambert’s original measurement system and the modified one are then applied to Italian personal income tax in 2008. According to the modified measurement system, the average tax rate seems to play a smaller role than that suggested by the results gained using Kakwani and Lambert’s original methodology.     

Another look at the spending response to the 2001 income tax rebates

This article revisits the spending response to the 2001 US tax rebates by focussing on two key aspects of how tax policy researchers use the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX). These two attributes, which are often overlooked, are as follows: the measures used for consumption and the ‘outlier’ criteria applied to the data. First, I reproduce the results in Johnson et al. (2006 Johnson, DS, Parker, JA and Souleles, NS. 2006. Household expenditure and the income tax rebates of 2001. American Economic Review, 96: 1589–610. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), which (using the CEX) concluded that households immediately spent 20–40% of their rebates on nondurable consumption goods. Then, I show how making two changes – both of which are relied upon in the literature – affects their results. These adjustments reduce the estimated magnitude of the rebate's impact by as much as 100%.     

Optimal tax reform in the presence of adjustment costs

The optimal implementation of an efficiency-enhancing capital taxation reform is examined when the government is concerned about arbitrary reform-induced redistributions and investment causes firms to incur adjustment costs. Theoretical results indicate that immediate partial enactment of reform is optimal with concave adjustment costs, while with convex adjustment costs, the optimal reform implementation policy is either (i) immediate partial enactment with sufficiently low adjustment costs, (ii) phased-in partial enactment with intermediate adjustment costs, or (iii) postponed partial enactment with sufficiently high adjustment costs. Numerical results suggest that, relative to the optimal one-step implementation policy, little is gained by phasing-in reform.     

Impact of income tax on happiness: evidence from the United States

The present work considers the level of demonstrated happiness and unhappiness within groups, the latter measured by the conditional probability of suicide within groups facing an income tax rate and those without. Using US data for the year 2004, our results show that individuals have lower rates of suicide or are ‘happy’ when they do not pay income taxes than those who pay.     

从公平原则审视我国的个人所得税

税收是国家财政收入的重要来源,个人所得税又是税收中重要的税种。国家可以也应该通过个人所得税调节国民收入,缩小国民贫富差距,这就需要一个公平的且能起调节作用的个人所得税税制。