Author: Joel Slemrod Publisher: ISBN: Category : Income tax Languages : en Pages : 52
Book Description
We investigate the optimal rate structure of an income tax system that is constrained to have only two brackets, plus a demogrant. We find that, in a two-class economy, Pareto efficient tax schedules feature at least one marginal tax rate equal to zero, and that the marginal tax rate may be increasing or declining. We next use numerical optimization techniques to study the optimal structure of such a tax system in a multi-person model that is a stylized version of an actual economy. We discover that in all cases the tax rate in the second (higher) bracket is less than the tax rate that applies to the first bracket but that progressivity, in the sense of a uniformly rising average tax rate, generally obtains. Compared to the optimal one-bracket (linear) tax system, both the highest and lowest income individuals are better off, while a middle range of taxpayers is worse off.
Author: Matti Tuomala Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198753411 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 506
Book Description
Tax systems raise large amounts of revenue for funding public sector's activities, and tax/transfer policy, together with public provision of education, health care, and social services, play a crucial role in treating the symptoms and the causes of poverty. The normative analysis is crucial for tax/transfer design because it makes it possible to assess separately how changes in the redistributive criterion of the government, and changes in the size of the behavioural responses to taxes and transfers, affect the optimal tax/transfer system. Optimal tax theory provides a way of thinking rigorously about these trade-offs. Written primarily for graduate students and researchers, this volume is intended as a textbook and research monograph, connecting optimal tax theory to tax policy. It comments on some policy recommendations of the Mirrlees Review, and builds on the authors work on public economics, optimal tax theory, behavioural public economics, and income inequality. The book explains in depth the Mirrlees model and presents various extensions of it. The first set of extensions considers changing the preferences for consumption and work: behavioural-economic modifications (such as positional externalities, prospect theory, paternalism, myopic behaviour and habit formation) but also heterogeneous work preferences (besides differences in earnings ability). The second set of modifications concerns the objective of the government. The book explains the differences in optimal redistributive tax systems when governments - instead of maximising social welfare - minimise poverty or maximise social welfare based on rank order or charitable conservatism social welfare functions. The third set of extensions considers extending the Mirrlees income tax framework to allow for differential commodity taxes, capital income taxation, public goods provision, public provision of private goods, and taxation commodities that generate externalities. The fourth set of extensions considers incorporating a number of important real-word extensions such as tagging of tax schedules to certain groups of tax payers. In all extensions, the book illustrates the main mechanisms using advanced numerical simulations.
Author: Jonathan Gruber Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 9780716786559 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 806
Book Description
Chapters include: "Income distribution and welfare programs", "State and local government expenditures" and "Health economics and private health insurance".
Author: Louis Kaplow Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 140083922X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 495
Book Description
The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics presents a unified conceptual framework for analyzing taxation--the first to be systematically developed in several decades. An original treatment of the subject rather than a textbook synthesis, the book contains new analysis that generates novel results, including some that overturn long-standing conventional wisdom. This fresh approach should change thinking, research, and teaching for decades to come. Building on the work of James Mirrlees, Anthony Atkinson and Joseph Stiglitz, and subsequent researchers, and in the spirit of classics by A. C. Pigou, William Vickrey, and Richard Musgrave, this book steps back from particular lines of inquiry to consider the field as a whole, including the relationships among different fiscal instruments. Louis Kaplow puts forward a framework that makes it possible to rigorously examine both distributive and distortionary effects of particular policies despite their complex interactions with others. To do so, various reforms--ranging from commodity or estate and gift taxation to regulation and public goods provision--are combined with a distributively offsetting adjustment to the income tax. The resulting distribution-neutral reform package holds much constant while leaving in play the distinctive effects of the policy instrument under consideration. By applying this common methodology to disparate subjects, The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics produces significant cross-fertilization and yields solutions to previously intractable problems.
Author: Emmanuel Saez Publisher: ISBN: Category : Capital levy Languages : en Pages : 42
Book Description
This paper analyzes optimal progressive capital income taxation in an infinite horizon model where individuals differ only through their initial wealth. We show that, in that context, progressive taxation is a much more powerful and efficient tool to redistribute wealth than linear taxation on which previous literature has focused. We consider progressive capital income tax schedules taking a simple two-bracket form with an exemption bracket at the bottom and a single marginal tax rate above a time varying exemption threshold. Individuals are taxed until their wealth is reduced down to the exemption threshold. When the intertemportal elasticity of substitution is not too large and the top tail of the initial wealth distribution is infinite and thick enough, the optimal exemption threshold converges to a finite limit. As a result, the optimal tax system drives all the large fortunes down a finite level and produces a truncated long-run wealth distribution. A number of numerical simulations illustrate the theoretical result
Author: A. Mitchell Polinsky Publisher: Elsevier ISBN: 0444512357 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 887
Book Description
Law can be viewed as a body of rules and legal sanctions that channel behavior in socially desirable directions - for example, by encouraging individuals to take proper precautions to prevent accidents or by discouraging competitors from colluding to raise prices. The incentives created by the legal system are thus a natural subject of study by economists. Moreover, given the importance of law to the welfare of societies, the economic analysis of law merits prominent treatment as a subdiscipline of economics. Our hope is that this two volume Handbook will foster the study of the legal system by economists. *The two volumes form a comprehensive and accessible survey of the current state of the field. *Chapters prepared by leading specialists of the area. *Summarizes received results as well as new developments.
Author: Bev Dahlby Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262292319 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 347
Book Description
A unified treatment of the marginal cost of public funds, covering both its theoretical foundations and how the MCF concept can be used to analyze tax policy issues. The marginal cost of public funds (MCF) measures the loss incurred by society in raising additional revenues to finance government spending. The MCF has emerged as one of the most important concepts in public economics; it is a key component in evaluations of tax reforms, public expenditure programs, and other public policies. The Marginal Cost of Public Funds provides a unified treatment of the MCF, carefully developing its theoretical foundations in a variety of contexts and describing its application to a wide range of policies—from excise taxes in Thailand to public sector borrowing in Canada and the United States. The Marginal Cost of Public Funds develops the basic theory of the MCF within the framework of public economics and shows how it is related to the traditional measures of the efficiency loss from distortionary taxation. The MCF concept is then applied to the major sources of revenues for governments—sales and excise taxes, taxes on labor income, taxes on the return to capital, public sector borrowing, and intergovernmental grants. This book will be an essential reference for economists and public policy analysts both in and out of government. Exercises and recommendations for further reading at the end of each main chapter highlight its usefulness as a supplementary text in advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in public economics.
Author: David F. Bradford Publisher: American Enterprise Institute ISBN: 9780844738918 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 340
Book Description
The fifteen authors and five commentators include current and former members of the Office of Tax Analysis, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the Congressional Budget Office, lending an authority to this discussion of tax distributional tables, their methodology, and consideration for improvement. The analysis outlines the attitudes and problems in the current distributional tax methods, innovations in the JCT distribution, the use of generational accounting, transfer systems, and lifetime taxpayer profiles. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Alan J. Auerbach Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139464515 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
This book was first published in 2007. Most countries levy taxes on corporations, but the impact - and therefore the wisdom - of such taxes is highly controversial among economists. Does the burden of these taxes fall on wealthy shareowners, or is it passed along to those who work for, or buy the products of, corporations? Can a country with high corporate taxes remain competitive in the global economy? This book features research by leading economists and accountants that sheds light on these and related questions, including how taxes affect corporate dividend policy, stock market value, avoidance, and evasion. The studies promise to inform both future tax policy and regulatory policy, especially in light of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission that are having profound effects on the market for tax planning and auditing in the wake of the well-publicized accounting scandals in Enron and WorldCom.
Author: Joel Slemrod
Author: Matti Tuomala
Author: Jonathan Gruber
Author: Louis Kaplow
Author: Emmanuel Saez
Author: A. Mitchell Polinsky
Author: Martin F. Hellwig
Author: Bev Dahlby
Author: David F. Bradford
Author: Alan J. Auerbach