This paper explores the implications of tax rate uncertainty, identifying circumstances in which revenue-neutral tax … heterogeneous taxpayers, tax rate variability is shown to perform an efficiency-enhancing screening function, imposing heavier … expected tax burdens on less responsive taxpayers. And while efficient tax uncertainty enables governments to reduce average …

Executors of estates for decedents in 2010 could choose between an estate tax regime and a basis carry-over regime. For … most executors, this created a tradeoff between a current estate tax payment and a future capital gains tax liability for … assets, outstanding debts, whether the decedent resided in a state with an estate tax, and the basis of assets held at the …

Much criticism of the income tax involves administration: the enormous complexity of the system is responsible for … large compliance costs, public and private, and the tax gap is large despite substantial resources devoted to enforcement … fundamental restructuring of the tax system. But evaluation of such changes is difficult because the underlying problems have not …

We study how strongly individuals respond to tax simplicity and how they learn about the complexities of the tax system …. We focus on the self-employed, who can more easily adjust to tax incentives and whose responses directly stem from their … own understanding of the tax system. We use new French tax returns data from 1994 to 2012. France serves as a good quasi …

In theory, the U.S. tax system aims to attribute and tax all business income to individuals. But the tax treatment of … sectors.We integrate a wide variety of tax data to document the large long-run changes in the structure of business income and … income tax returns has improved over time, a fact that has implications for measuring and understanding the income …

In economic analyses of the effects of tax policies, one commonly encounters discussions of the equivalence of … outcomes. These related tax policies may differ in many respects, which give rise to conditions under which the equivalences … may break down.This paper draws out the key issues that relate to tax equivalences, using several illustrations from …

paper argues that , in its current state, optimal tax theory is incomplete as a guide to action concerning many critical … issues in tax policy. It is incomplete because it has not yet come to terms with taxation as a system of coercively … cost of implementing a tax system have been and will continue to be a critical determinant of appropriate tax policy. The …

. Many tax policies, however, have effects which are markedly different both from the effects that these policies would have … distortionary effect on the pattern of extraction. More generally, it is shown that the effects of tax structure on the patterns of … extraction are critically dependent on expectations concerning future taxation. (The changes in tax structure which have occurred …

Recent estimates of the potential growth effects of tax reform vary widely, ranging from zero (Lucas 1990) to eight … parameter values are important for determining the quantitative impact of tax reform. We find that the critical parameters are …