We incorporate the fact that inheritances create a second distinguishing characteristic of individuals, in addition to earning abilities, into an optimum income taxation model with bequests motivated by joy of giving. We show that a tax on inheritances and a uniform tax on all expenditures...

We formulate an optimum-taxation model, where parents leave bequests to their descendants for altruistic reasons. In contrast to the standard model, individuals differ not only in earning abilities, but also in initial (inherited) wealth. In this model a redistributive motive for an inheritance...

When accidental bequests signal otherwise unobservable individual characteristics such as productivity and longevity, the tax administration should partition the population into two groups: One consisting of people who do not receive an inheritance and the other of those who do. The first tagged...

I study a model of a representative individual who has a motive for leaving bequests and is at risk of needing long-term care in old age. I assume - as is typical for OECD countries - that the individual is not fully insured against this risk. Moreover, at realization the individual is unable to...

Altruistic parents may transfer resources to their offspring by providing education, and by leaving bequests. We show that in the presence of wage taxation, a small bequest tax may improve efficiency in an overlapping-generations framework with only intended bequests, by enhancing incentives of...

We analyze the implications of the decline in labor’s share in national income for optimal Ramsey taxation. It is optimal to accompany the decline in labor share by raising capital taxes only if the labor share is falling because of a decline in competition or other mechanisms that raise the...

This paper studies the properties of the optimal taxes on bequests when individuals differ in wage and in their risks of mortality and old-age dependance. Survival is positively correlated to income but dependency is negatively correlated with it. The government cannot distinguish between...

There is increasing empirical evidence that people systematically differ in their rates of return on capital. We derive optimal non-linear taxes on labor and capital income in the presence of such return heterogeneity. We allow for two distinct reasons why returns are heterogeneous: because...

This paper shows that capital-skill complementarity provides a quantitatively significant rationale to tax capital for redistributive governments. The optimal capital income tax rate is 60%, which is significantly higher than the optimal rate of 48% in an identically calibrated model without...