Taxation and risk taking are examined in a general equilibrium model that incorporates uncertain government revenue in a nonrestrictive manner and allows the government to influence its revenue through portfolio investments as well as through tax policy. It is demonstrated that each of a wide...

This paper explores the implications of tax rate uncertainty, identifying circumstances in which revenue-neutral tax rate variability increases profitability, economic activity, and the efficiency of resource allocation. Furthermore, with heterogeneous taxpayers, tax rate variability is shown to...

This paper revisits the Atkinson-Stiglitz result on uselessness of commodity taxation in the presence of optimal non-linear income taxation in a more general setup, namely when tastes are heterogeneous. This general analysis displays the key economic assumptions under which the Atkinson-Stiglitz...

This paper investigates whether taxpayers bunch at the kink points of the US income tax schedule (i.e. where marginal rates jump) using tax returns data. Clear evidence of bunching is found only at the first kink point (where marginal rates jump from 0 to 15%). Evidence for other kink points is...

How much and how to tax high-income individuals is at the core of many recent proposals for incremental as well as fundamental tax reform. This paper critically reviews the economics literature and concludes that the right answer to these questions depends in part on value judgments about which...

We develop a general equilibrium tax model to evaluate the impacts of equal yield base broadening in indirect taxes from high rate narrow based (typically manufactures) taxes to broad based taxes (including services) such as a VAT. We capture differences in choice of mode of supply between...

This paper examines the incidence of commodity taxes, finding that, when demand and marginal cost schedules are linear. the burden of commodity taxation is distributed between buyers and sellers so that each suffers the same percentage reduction on pre-tax surplus. This equiproportionate...