Tax Neutrality and Social Welfare in a Comptutational General Equilibrium Framework

This article investigates the effects of distributionally neutral tax changes on equity and efficiency using computational general equilibrium and stochastic dominance techniques. The authors find, for a tax increase, that the constant-tax-share definition is preferred both in terms of efficiency and equity for a wide range of values of the elasticity of labor supply. For a tax decrease, the constant-after-tax-income definition dominates. For low elasticities of labor supply, no general welfare conclusions can be drawn, but under reasonable assumptions the constant-tax-share definition would be approved by a risk-averse median voter.