Intro -- Contents -- Series Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Part I Introduction and Motivation -- 1 The Need for Tax-System Analysis -- 2 Standard Optimal Tax Models -- Part II Building Blocks of Tax Systems -- 3 Multiple Behavioral Margins -- 4 Multiple Sources of Costs -- 5 Tax Base Elasticity...

The theory of optimal taxation has , for the pas two decades , been the reigning normative approach of taxation. This 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...