We present a non-cooperative model of a family's time allocation between work and a home-produced public good, and examine whether the income tax should apply to couples or individuals. While tax-induced labor supply distortions lead to overprovision of the public good, spouses' failure to...

Previous studies have shown that the optimal marginal tax rate at the bottom of the income distribution may be positive, negative, or even zero. This paper reexamines this problem in a unified framework and tries to evaluate the arguments. It turns out that the case for positive marginal tax...