There are three main approaches to taxing capital income, being the income tax, the expenditure tax – which effectively exempts most capital income - or hybrids such as the rate of return allowance (RRA). This paper considers the theoretical arguments for taxing capital income less than fully,...

How are optimal taxes affected by the presence of superstar phenomena at the top of the earnings distribution? To answer this question, we extend the Mirrlees model to incorporate an assignment problem in the labor market that generates superstar effects. Perhaps surprisingly, rather than...

In this paper we compute the optimal tax and education policy transition in an economy where progressive taxes provide social insurance against idiosyncratic wage risk, but distort the education decision of households. Optimally chosen tertiary education subsidies mitigate these distortions. We...

This paper develops a theory of optimal taxation with behavioral agents. We use a general behavioral framework that encompasses a wide range of behavioral biases such as misperceptions, internalities and mental accounting. We revisit the three pillars of optimal taxation: Ramsey (linear...

We evaluate the effectiveness of a more progressive tax scheme in raising government revenues. We develop a life-cycle economy with heterogeneity and endogenous labor supply. Households face a progressive income tax schedule, mimicking the Federal Income tax, and flat-rate taxes that capture...

People are heterogeneous in the skills by which they turn effort into output. A central question in normative public economics is how to redistribute resources from more- to less-skilled individuals efficiently. In addition to income taxation, this paper considers another policy tool of...

There is clear evidence that fairness plays a role in redistribution. Individuals want to compensate others for their misfortune, while they allow them to enjoy the fruits of their effort. Such fairness considerations have been introduced in political economy and optimal income tax models with a...

The author argues that, by vigorously collecting taxes on sales to non-tribe member buyers, and by carefully avoiding taxation of sales that affect tribes and their members as customers, states that levy gross receipts sales taxes should be able to proceed without constitutional infirmity

We derive and present the formula for optimal debt under the assumption that tax shields are discounted at the cost of levered equity, Ke and cash flows are on perpetuity. The formulation is consistent and is derived from basic financial principles. This formulation is valid for non-growing...

The paper deals with taxation effects on optimal portfolio rules of de fined contribution (DC) and de fined benefi t (DB) pension funds in a continuous-time setting. Following practice, three tax types are considered: on contributions, investment gains and pensions. We focus on the tax effects...