Christmas is when people are expected to act selflessly for the well-being of others, but are people actually more altruistic at this time of the year? Responding to this question poses a challenge because of the confounding factors of charitable tax breaks, reciprocity motives, direct social...

Using the Mirrlees optimal income tax model with a maxi-min social welfare function, we derive conditions for a decreasing marginal tax rate throughout the skill distribution, a strictly concave tax function in income and a single-peaked average tax schedule. With additive preferences and a...