The purpose of this paper is to introduce and adopt a generalised version of Roemer's (1998) Equality of Opportunity (EOp) framework, which we call extended EOp, for analysing second-best optimal income taxation. Unlike the pure EOp criterion of Roemer (1998) the extended EOp criterion allows...

This paper presents for the first time the properties of optimal piecewise linear tax systems for two-earner households, based on joint and individual incomes respectively. A key contribution is the analysis of the interaction of second earner wage differences, variation in prices of bought-in...

We theoretically express the Laffer tax rate on capital income as a function of the elasticities of capital income (the "direct" elasticity) and of labor income (the "cross" elasticity) with respect to the net-of-tax rate on capital income. We estimate these elasticities using salient capital...

The purpose of the paper is to provide a discussion of the various approaches for accounting for labour supply responses in microsimulation models. The paper focuses attention on two methodologies for modelling labour supply: the discrete choice model and the random utility – random...

We provide a critique of the standard methodology which bases welfare comparisons between households on deflating household income and consumption by an equivalence scale. We argue that this leads to support for tax/transfer policies that significantly disadvantage low to middle income...

Given its significance in practice, piecewise linear taxation has received relatively little attention in the literature. This paper offers a simple and transparent analysis of its main characteristics. We fully characterize optimal tax parameters for the cases in which budget sets are convex...

This paper revisits the standard model of labor supply under two additional assumptions: consumption requires time and some limited amount of work is enjoyable. Whereas introducing each assumption without the other one does not produce novel insights, combining them together does if the wage...

We analyze the optimal nonlinear income tax schedule when taxpayers earn multiple incomes and differ along many unobserved dimensions. We derive the necessary conditions for the government s optimum using both a tax perturbation and a mechanism design approach, and show that both methods produce...

This paper studies the design of couples' income taxation when consumption and labor supply decisions within the couple are made by maximizing a weighted sum of the spouses' utilities; bargaining weights are given but specific to each couple. Information structure and labor supply decisions...

In a number of high-income countries over the past few decades there has been a large growth in income inequality and at the same time a shift in the burden of taxation from the top to the middle of the income distribution. This paper applies the theory of optimal piecewise linear taxation to...