The quest for financial integration in Europe has created pressures to adapt the taxation of income from capital to the new reality of free capital movments and access to global markets for investments. Taxation of income from capital is among the most important factors affecting investment...

In order to alleviate unemployment it is often recommended to reduce social security contributions (SSC) and to compensate for the ensuing loss in revenues by a rise in the value-added tax (VAT). Assuming unemployment to be caused by efficiency wages, it is shown that a balanced-budget shift...

The dual income tax combines a progressive tax schedule for labor income with a low flat tax rate on capital income and corporate income. This paper restates the case for the dual income tax and discusses alternative methods of taxing business income under such a tax system, paying special...

The paper studies the effects that tax rate changes have on the cost of capital when firms follow target leverage ratios. We show that changes in individual income tax rates are neutral. The focus therefore is on the effects of changes in marginal corporate tax rates. These effects are computed...

It is well known that consumption-tax systems have several advantages over existing income-tax systems, such as greater administrative simplicity and intertemporal neutrality. Despite these advantages, proposals to introduce consumption taxes have only had very limited success. This paper...

Under the Nordic dual income tax system, the taxpayer's total tax bill depends not only on his total income but also on the division of that income between capital income and labor income. This has created new room for tax avoidance, especially for active owners of (closed) corporations. For...

A number of tax reform plans under discussion in the United States would replace the existing hybrid income-based system with a consumption-based system. In this paper I use uniform (single-rate) consumption and income taxes: (a) to explain how the problem of taxing 'old savings' or 'old...

The paper summarizes the arguments in favor of a shift from comprehensive to dual income taxation and complements the discussion by an overview of tax reforms, which reveals the characteristic features of a dual income tax system. The scope of our analysis is not restricted to the Nordic...