In 1909 the United Kingdom Government introduced super-taxʺ, which was an additional income tax levied on top incomes. This provided information on the distribution of total incomes that had not previously been available on a regular basis, since under the ordinary income tax, the authorities...

Taxation data have been used to create long-run series for the distribution of top incomes in quite a number of countries. Most of these studies have focused on the national experience of individual countries, but we can also learn from cross-country comparisons. Comparative analysis is...