The current debate on whether the US tax base should be income or consumption has been waged in terms of the traditional criteria for evaluating tax policy - efficiency, equity and administrability. Proponents of the consumption tax have argued that it is superior to the income tax on all three...

This essay revisits certain basic features of tax systems as they relate to redistribution. It focuses on how the actual differences between proportional and graduated taxes with regard to redistribution diverge in important ways from what many believe or implicitly assume. The analysis seeks to...