We analytically and quantitatively examine a prominent justifi…cation for capital income taxation: goods preferred by those with high ability ought to be taxed. We study an environment where commodity taxes are allowed to be nonlinear functions of income and consumption and …find that, when...

Commentary and political rhetoric on taxes in the United States have long included appeals to Smith's (1776) "classical" logic of benefit based taxation in which an individual's benefit from the state is tied to his or her income-earning ability. Modern optimal tax theory, in contrast, largely...