This paper evaluates income tax reforms in China and India. The combination of fast income growth and under-indexed tax schedule in China implies the fraction of the Chinese population subject to income tax has increased from less than 0.1 percent in 1986 to about 20 percent in 2008, while it...

This paper derives optimal top tax rate formulas in a model where top earners respond to taxes through three channels: labor supply, tax avoidance, and compensation bargaining. The optimal top tax rate increases when there are zero-sum compensation-bargaining effects. We present empirical...