This paper presents two arguments in favor of the sole use of an income tax for redistribution purposes. The first is that most findings on nonlinear commodity taxation such as Mirrlees's formulae for Pareto efficiency, Seade's results on zero tax rates at the endpoints of the scale, and the...

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...

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...

A method for handling monotonicity constraints in optimal control problems is applied in order to correct a technical weakness of optimal nonlinear taxation models with many commodities, caused by the neglect of a second order constraint for utility maximization. We conclude that all the optimal...

The standard model on optimal income taxation in the presence of tax evasion is extended to allow for mobility between the legal and hidden sectors. The conclusions from the traditional analysis of tax evasion strongly contrast with those that result when extensive margin responses are taken...

We estimate effective and optimal net income tax schedules and compare them to the estimated statutory rates for the case of Lithuania for the period 2014-2015. Values of effective net tax rates are estimated from the survey of EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions; the statutory net tax...

Should income transfers be conditional upon personal characteristics of the potential recipients (the so-called quot;taggingquot;) or should they only be tied to reported incomes? There is clear evidence that tagging and its assessment of the eligibility of applicants creates stigmatization. In...

We study optimal fiscal policy in a standard incomplete-markets model with uninsurable idiosyncratic income risk, where a Ramsey planner chooses time-varying paths of proportional capital and labor income taxes, lump-sum transfers (or taxes), and government debt. We find that: (1) short-run...

This paper studies how linear tax and education policy should optimally respond to skill-biased technical change (SBTC). SBTC affects optimal taxes and subsidies by changing i) direct distributional benefits, ii) indirect redistributional effects due to wage-(de)compression, and iii) education...

We study optimal taxation in a model with endogenous financial frictions, risky investment and occupational choice, where the distribution of wealth across entrepreneurs affects how efficiently capital is used. The planner chooses linear taxes on wealth, capital and labor income to maximize the...