Samuelson (1964) showed that an income tax with an allowance for "economic" depreciation leads to asset valuations that are independent of their holders' marginal rates of tax. The tax system is then "neutral," in the sense that assets have the same value to all, irrespective of whether or at...

It has become conventional wisdom, based partly on postulated portfolio adjustments by investors in risky assets, (1) to view an income tax as equivalent to a tax levied only on the risk free return to capital and as therefore equivalent to a wealth tax; and (2) to view the difference between an...

The federal income tax code has become increasingly complex over time with the implication that many taxpayers no longer understand the connection between their life decisions and their taxes. Some commentators have suggested that increasing computational complexity may be attributable in part...

Most large public companies offer their executives the opportunity to defer the receipt and taxation of their salary or other current compensation until retirement or some other future date, and equity compensation, which also entails deferral of pay and taxation, constitutes a large fraction of...

Although nonqualified deferred compensation plans lack explicit tax preferences afforded qualified plans, it is well understood that nonqualified deferred compensation results in a joint tax advantage when employers earn a higher after‐tax return on deferred sums than employees could do on...

The expected utility formulation of the problem of a risk-averse agent's allocating a portfolio between a safe and a risky asset is widely taken as standing for the proposition that if α* ε (0, 1) is the optimal allocation to the risky asset in the absence of tax, α*/(1-t) is the optimal...

The expected utility formulation of the problem of a risk-averse agent's allocating a portfolio between a safe and a risky asset is widely taken as standing for the proposition that if α* ε (0, 1) is the optimal allocation to the risky asset in the absence of tax, α*/(1-t) is the optimal...

Conventional wisdom is that preferential taxation of property income elevates asset values above their values in the absence of a tax, with those values strictly increasing in the marginal rate of the holder. I show that preferential tax rates (such as the rate on realized long-term capital...

I show that the value of preferential taxation of asset returns under an income tax that extends to property income is (a) strictly increasing in the taxpayer's marginal rate if the preference takes the form of a preferential rate; but that (b) it attains some maximum at a marginal rate between...

Quill v. North Dakota unbalanced the American retail market with its preference for out-of-state over in-state sellers. The preference under Quill is that sellers without physical presence in a state cannot be compelled to collect the sales tax. If the buyer does not voluntarily remit the...