This paper studies majority voting over non-linear income taxes when individuals respond to taxation by substituting untaxable leisure to taxable labor. We first show that voting cycle over progressive and regressive taxes is inevitable. This is because the middle-class can always lower its tax...

Recently Marhuenda and Ortuno-Ortin (1995) have provided a popular support for progressivity theorem that says that a marginal progressive tax always defeats a marginal regressive tax as long as individuals vote for the tax scheme minimizing their tax liabilities and the median income is less...