This paper derives optimal income tax formulas using compensated and uncompensated elasticities of earnings with respect to tax rates. A simple formula for the high income optimal tax rate is obtained as a function of these elasticities and the thickness of the top tail of the income...

This paper attempts to help explain the unforecasted, excess' personal income tax revenues of the last several years. Using panel data on executive compensation in the 1990s, it argues that because the gains on most stock options are treated as ordinary income for tax purposes, rising stock...

A central tax policy parameter that has recently received much attention, but about which there is substantial uncertainty, is the overall elasticity of taxable income. We provide new estimates of this elasticity which address identification problems with previous work, by exploiting a long...

This paper studies the effects of progressive income taxes and education finance in a dynamic heterogeneous agent economy. Such redistributive policies entail distortions to labor supply and savings, but also serve as partial substitutes for missing credit and insurance markets. The resulting...

We characterize optimal policies in a multidimensional nonlinear taxation model with bunching. We develop an empirically relevant model with cognitive and manual skills, firm heterogeneity, and labor market sorting. The analysis of optimal policy is based on two main results. We first derive an...

Using Difference-in-Differences models, we estimate the impact of an exogenous increase in income on the incidence and intensity of intimate partner violence (IPV). Using National Crime Victimization Survey data from 1992 to 2000, we exploit time and family-size variation in the Earned Income...

We study optimal taxation in a model with endogenous financial frictions, risky investment and occupational choice, where the distribution of wealth across entrepreneurs affects how efficiently capital is used. The planner chooses linear taxes on wealth, capital and labor income to maximize the...

This paper provides general and empirically implementable sufficient statistics formulas for optimal nonlinear tax systems in the presence of preference heterogeneity. We study unrestricted tax systems on income and savings (or other commodities) that implement the optimal direct-revelation...

This paper uses evidence from a survey of Minnesota taxpayers to estimate the magnitude and demographic patterns of the compliance cost of filing federal and state income tax returns. It concludes that in 1982 this cost was between $17 and $27 billion, or from five to seven percent of the...