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Relative consumption effects or status concerns that feature jealousy (in the sense of Dupor and Liu, AER 2003) boost consumption expenditure. If consumption is financed by labour income, such status considerations increase labour supply and, hence, the tax base. A higher taxable income, in turn, can make tax evasion more attractive. We show for various specifications of preferences that the tax base effect generally dominates. Consequently, relative consumption effects tend to reduce tax evasion. This is true, irrespective of whether tax parameters are exogenous, guarantee a balanced budget or are set optimally.

Relative consumption effects or status concerns that feature jealousy (in the sense of Dupor and Liu, AER 2003) boost consumption expenditure. If consumption is financed by labour income, such status considerations increase labour supply and, hence, the tax base. A higher taxable income, in turn, can make tax evasion more attractive. We show for various specifications of preferences that the tax base effect generally dominates. Consequently, relative consumption effects tend to reduce tax evasion. This is true, irrespective of whether tax parameters are exogenous, guarantee a balanced budget or are set optimally.

This paper explores the implications of gender-based income taxation in a non- cooperative model of a couple’s time allocation between market work and providing a household public good. We find that the optimal structure of differential taxation by gender is solely determined by spouses’ relative marginal rates of substitution between the public household good and private consumption. Breaking down this general rule into the primitives of the model, the spouse with a lower personal valuation of the public household good should be taxed at a higher rate. If these valuations are identical, a comparative advantage in home production relative to market work will imply a higher marginal tax rate. Using a realistic calibration, we show that these two results may combine to imply a higher optimal tax rate on female labor supply. This result stands in sharp contrast to previous models of gender-based taxation in which households select Pareto efficient allocations. Extending the model to include altruistic preferences, leisure, or human capital accumulation reduces optimal tax rates, while sequential labor supply decisions affect the optimal tax rate of the primary earner in an ambiguous direction.

Addressing extensive labour supply responses, the literature has established a case for larger transfers to the working poor than to even poorer non-working people. This paper casts new light on this result. I argue that the result hinges crucially on the labour supply responses of people in income brackets above that of the working poor. Then distinguishing between more and less poor working people, I show that if a single working type faces a negative tax, it is the poorer one. I extend the analysis by endogenising wages and show that key conditions will be of the same form as with exogenous wages.

We analyze the impact of tax morale on the optimal progressive labor income taxation. Only universal basic income is financed from a linear tax and the financing of public goods is neglected. Each individual supplies labor and (un)declares earning, depending on his labor disutility and tax morale. Limiting the utilitarianism to the poorer parts of the population (defined by the inclusion share), the optimal tax rate is an increasing function of the tax morale and a decreasing function of the inclusion share, provide that the average wage of the included is higher than 0.54 times the average wage.

This paper reviews the literature on optimal taxation of labour income and the empirical work on labour supply and the elasticity of taxable income in Sweden. It also presents an overview of Swedish taxation of labour income, offers calculations on the development in effective marginal tax rates and participation tax rates, and estimates, using the difference-in-differences method, the impact of tax incentives on employment rates of elderly workers. After this background, we ponder possibilities for reforming the Swedish tax system to improve its labour market impacts. We suggest better targeting the earned income tax credit at families and low-income workers, lowering the top marginal tax rates, and maintaining the tax incentives for older workers.

This paper characterizes the optimal redistributive tax schedule in a matching unemployment framework where (voluntary) nonparticipation and (involuntary) unemployment are endogenous. The optimal employment tax rate is given by an inverse employment elasticity rule. This rule depends on the global response of the employment rate, which depends not only on the participation (labor supply) responses, but also on the vacancy posting (labor demand) responses and on the product of these two responses. For plausible values of the parameters, our matching environment induces much lower employment tax rates than the usual competitive model with endogenous participation only.

Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result of differences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that paves the debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, we estimate labor supply elasticities on microdata and adopt an inverted optimal tax approach to characterize the redistributive preferences embodied in the welfare systems of 17 EU countries and the US. Implicit social welfare functions are broadly compatible with the fiction of an optimizing Paretian social planner. Some exceptions due to generous demogrant transfers are consistent with the ignorance of behavioral responses by some European governments and are partly corrected by recent policy developments. Heterogeneity in leisure-consumption preferences somewhat affect the international comparison in degrees of revealed inequality aversion, but differences in social preferences are signi ficant only between broad groups of countries.

We present a non-cooperative model of a family’s time allocation between work and a home-produced public good, and examine whether the income tax should apply to couples or individuals. While tax-induced labor supply distortions lead to overprovision of the public good, spouses’ failure to internalize the collective effect of their choices points towards underprovision. A large parameter range exists for which a move from individual to joint taxation improves the welfare of both spouses. The source of Pareto-improvement consists in moving the level of the public good closer to its first-best, while an adjustment of intra-family transfers compensates the secondary earner for the increased tax load.

Changing the income tax progressivity in labour markets with collective wage bargaining generates a trade-off. On the one hand, higher progressivity distorts individual labour supply decisions at the hours-of-work margin, on the other hand, it reduces unemployment by exerting downward pressure on wages. This trade-off is quantitatively assessed using a numerical model for Germany. The model combines a microsimulation module, which captures the labour-supply decisions of approximately 4600 individual households, and a macro (computable general equilibrium) module, which features collective wage bargaining and involuntary unemployment. In the simulations carried out using this model, the optimal degree of tax progressivity turns out to be higher than the one in the actual German tax schedule. The optimum is located at marginal tax rates that are 6 percentage points higher than the actual rates (combined with a transfer that balances the public budget). The welfare gain from such a reform is modest, however. It amounts to no more than two euros per person per month.

We develop and estimate a microeconometric model of household labour supply in four European countries representative of different economies and welfare policy regimes: Denmark, Italy, Portugal and the United Kingdom. We then simulate, under the constraint of constant total net tax revenue (fiscal neutrality), the effects of various hypothetical tax-transfer reforms which include alternative versions of a Basic Income policy: Guaranteed Minimum Income, Work Fare, Participation Basic Income and Universal Basic Income. We produce indexes and criteria according to which the reforms can be ranked and compared to the current tax-transfer systems. The exercise can be considered as one of empirical optimal taxation, where the optimization problem is solved computationally rather than analytically. It turns out that many versions of the Basic Income policies would be superior to the current system. The most successful policies are those involving non means-tested versions of basic income (Universal or Participation Basic Income) and adopting progressive tax-rules. If - besides the fiscal neutrality constraint - also other constraints are considered, such as the implied top marginal top tax rate or the effect on female labour supply, the picture changes: unconditional policies remain optimal and feasible in Denmark and the UK; instead in Italy and Portugal universal policies appear to be too costly in terms of implied top marginal tax rates and in terms of adverse effects on female participation, and conditional policies such as Work-Fare, emerge as more desirable.

Discussion papers (Statistisk sentralbyrå, Forskningsavdelingen) er også tilgjengelige via www.ssb.no Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to introduce and adopt a generalised version of Roemer's (1998) Equality of Opportunity (EOp) framework, which we call extended EOp, for analysing second-best optimal income taxation. Unlike the pure EOp criterion of Roemer (1998) the extended EOp criterion allows for alternative weighting profiles in the treatment of income differentials between as well as within types when types are defined by circumstances that are beyond people's control. This study uses parental education as a measure of exogenous circumstances. An empirical microeconometric model of labour supply in Italy is employed to simulate and identify income tax-transfer rules that are optimal according to the extended EOp criterion. We look for second-best optimality, i.e. the tax-transfer rules are not allowed to depend on family background, they only depend on income: family background is taken indirectly into account. The rules are defined by a universal (not individualized) lump-sum transfer (positive or negative) and by one or two marginal tax rates. A rather striking result of the analysis is that the optimal tax-transfer rule turns out to be a universal lump-sum tax (with marginal tax rates equal to zero), under Roemer's pure EOp criterion as well as under the generalised EOp criterion with moderate degrees of aversion to within-type inequality. A higher degree of within-type inequality aversion instead produces EOp-optimal rules with positive marginal tax rates. When the EOp-version of the Gini welfare function is adopted, the optimal tax rule turns out to be close to the actual 1993 Italian tax system, if not for the important difference of prescribing a universal lump-sum positive transfer of 3,500,000 ITL (= 1807 Euros), which has no comparable counterpart in the actual system. On the other hand, when using the conventional equality of outcome (EO) criterion, the pure lump-sum tax always turns out to be optimal, at least with respect to the classes of two- and three-parameter rules. We also compute optimal rules under the additional constraint that universal lump-sum taxes are not feasible. Overall, the results do not conform to the perhaps common expectation that the EO criterion is more supportive of “interventionist” (redistributive) policies than an extended EOp approach. KEYWORDS: Equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, labour supply, optimal income taxation

By inverting Saez (2002)'s model of optimal income taxation, we characterize the redistributive preferences of the Irish government between 1987 and 2005. The (marginal) social welfare function revealed by this approach is consistently comparable over time and show great stability despite profound changes in market incomes and important fiscal reforms over the period. Results are robust to numerous checks regarding data, income concepts and elasticities. A comparison with the UK shows marked differences reflecting the narrow political spectrum in Ireland compared to radical changes in British politics over the past 30 years. Some anomalies in the revealed social welfare function suggests introducing transfers to the working poor.

We derive a general optimal income tax formula when individuals respond along both the intensive and extensive margins and when income effects can prevail. Individuals are heterogeneous across two dimensions: their skill and their disutility of participation. Preferences over consumption and work effort can differ with respect to the level of skill, with only the Spence-Mirrlees condition being imposed. Employing a new tax perturbation approach that integrates the nonlinearity of the tax function into the behavioral elasticities, we derive a fairly mild condition for optimal marginal tax rates to be nonnegative everywhere. Numerical simulations using U.S. data confirm the mildness of our conditions. The extensive margin strongly reduces the level of optimal marginal tax rates.

Atkinson and Stiglitz (Journal of Public Economics 1976) show that when the government has access to non-linear income taxation and consumer preferences are separable between consumption and leisure, there is no need for differentiated commodity taxation. This paper examines the empirical validity of this claim using consumption data from Finland. The data have extensive information on commodity demand, the use of public services and hours of work. When labour income is controlled for in a semi-parametric way, we find that capital income and housing expenses are negatively associated with hours of work, whereas the use of child care is somewhat positively correlated with labour supply. These results suggest that capital income and housing should be taxed whereas day care could perhaps be subsidised.

A new paradigm for transport economists has been established: revenues of a welfare-maximising road tax should be employed to reduce the level of a distortionary income tax. An essential modelling assumption to reach this conclusion is that the number of workdays is optimally chosen, whereas daily workhours are fixed, implying that given a road tax, workers may only reduce their commuting costs by reducing total labour supply. However, a labour supply model which also allows for optimally chosen daily hours implies that commuting costs increase daily hours, whereas the effect on total labour supply is ambiguous. This paper addresses this issue empirically by analysing the relationship between labour supply patterns and commuting distance using the socio-economic panel data for Germany between 1997 and 2007. Endogeneity of commuting distance is accounted for by using employer-induced changes in commuting distance. In line with the theoretical model developed, we find that commuting distance has a positive effect on daily hours. Our analysis does not find a negative effect of commuting distance on total labour supply, suggesting that a reduction in the income tax, as advocated in the literature, may not be necessary.

A new paradigm for transport economists has been established: revenues of a welfare-maximising road tax should be employed to reduce the level of a distortionary income tax. An essential assumption to reach this conclusion is that the number of workdays is optimally chosen, whereas daily workhours are fixed, implying that given a road tax, workers may only reduce their commuting costs by reducing total labour supply. However, a labour supply model which also allows for optimally chosen daily hours implies that commuting costs increase daily hours, whereas the effect on total labour supply is ambiguous. This paper addresses this issue empirically by analysing the relationship between labour supply patterns and commuting distance using the socio-economic panel data for Germany between 1997 and 2007. Endogeneity of commuting distance is accounted for by using employer-induced changes in commuting distance. In line with the theoretical model developed, we find that commuting distance has a positive effect on daily hours. Our analysis does not find a negative effect of commuting distance on total labour supply, suggesting that a reduction in the income tax, as advocated in the literature, may not be necessary.

In labour markets with collective wage bargaining higher progressivity of the labour income tax creates a trade-off. On the one hand, wages are lowered and unemployment decreases, on the other hand, the individual labour supply decision is distorted at the hours-of-work margin. The optimal level of tax progressivity within this trade-off is determined using a numerical general equilibrium model with imperfect competition on the goods market, collective wage bargaining and a labour-supply module calibrated to empirically plausible elasticity values. The model is calibrated to macroeconomic and institutional parameters of both the OECD average and a number of individual OECD countries. In most cases the optimal degree of tax progressivity is below the actual level. A decomposition approach shows that the optimal level is increased by high unemployment and by the general tax level.

Assuming a two-period model with endogenous choices of labour, education, and saving, it is shown to be second-best efficient to deviate from Ramsey's Rule and to distort qualified labour less than nonqualified labour. Furthermore, if the earnings function displays constant elasticity, the choice of education should not be distorted. With the necessary qualifications the results extend to the case when taxpayers are heterogeneous and when the planner trades off efficiency against equity.

This paper analyzes optimal linear taxes on labor income and savings in a standard two-period life-cycle model with endogenous leisure demands in both periods and non-insurable income risks. Households are subject to skill shocks in both periods of the life-cycle. We allow for completely general skill processes including those with persistence in skill shocks. We demonstrate that capital taxes are optimal since they reduce moral hazard in social insurance in two distinct ways: i) capital taxes reduce labor supply distortions on second-period labor supply, since second-period labor supply and saving are substitutes, ii) capital taxes reduce distortions in first-period labor supply by allowing for a lower level of labor taxes, although this effect is partially off-set because first-period labor supply and saving are complements. Capital taxes will be more attractive for social insurance if a larger part of risk is realized in the first period of the life-cycle. Our results suggest that taxing (retirement) saving is optimal to boost the retirement age and to reduce the tax-burden on working-age individuals.

This paper characterizes the optimal redistributive taxation when individuals are heterogeneous in two exogenous dimensions: their skills and their values of non-market activities. Search-matching frictions on the labor markets create unemployment. Wages, labor demand and participation are endogenous. The government only observes wage levels. Under a Maximin objective, if the elasticity of participation decreases along the distribution of skills, at the optimum, the average tax rate is increasing, marginal tax rates are positive everywhere, while wages, unemployment rates and participation rates are distorted downwards compared to their laissez-faire values. A simulation exercise confirms some of these properties under a general utilitarian objective. Taking account of the wage-cum-labor demand margin deeply changes the equity-efficiency trade-off.

In this paper we develop a discrete model of optimal taxation of married couples and empirically discuss the optimality of income taxation for this group. To this end, we derive the social welfare function which guarantees that joint taxation of married couples is optimal. We will contrast this welfare function with the one that makes a system of individual taxation optimal. For the empirical application we use a static structural labor supply model to estimate the preferences of households. We find that the system of joint taxation is only optimal when the government has a high taste for redistribution towards one-earner couples and a very low or even negative taste for redistribution towards couples in which both partners earn a similar amount of income. In contrast, the optimality of individual taxation is less dependent of the working composition within the household.

We take issue with the argument expounded, among others, by Layard (2006, Economic Journal) that status-seeking preferences justify heavier taxation of income because this serves to internalise the negative externality that the pursuit of status imposes on others. In a model where status depends on both income and effort, we show that the optimal corrective tax rate is smaller than if non-monetary status plays no role, and that a subsidy of work effort at the margin may be called for. Additionally, we demonstrate how the elasticity of labour supply depends on the parameters of the status production function in such a model, and discuss potential implications for optimal income taxation.

In this paper we investigate the effects of tax competition in a simple endogenous growth model with elastic labor supply. Our analysis focuses on two issues. First, we show that all taxes, i.e. on capital, labor, and consumption, are harmful for growth. Second, we derive the optimal tax policy. A regional government chooses an inefficiently low tax rate on mobile capital in the presence of tax competition. In contrast, the tax rates on labor income and consumption are always set in order not to distort the consumption-leisure choice.

This paper examines the tax schedule for low income families with children. We take an optimal tax approach based on a structural labour supply model which incorporates unobserved heterogeneity, fixed costs of work, childcare costs and the detailed non-convexities of the tax and transfer system. The motivation is the British earned income tax credit reform (WFTC) and its interaction with the tax and transfer system for lone parents. Our analysis also examines the case for the use of hours-contingent payments. The results point to a tax schedule which depends on the age of children, with tax credits only optimal for low earners with school age children. The results also suggest a welfare improving role for hours-contingent payments although this is mitigated when hours cannot be monitored or recorded accurately by the tax authorities.

This paper contributes to the debate about the optimal design of tax-transfer systems. Based on the theory of optimal taxation, combined with microsimulation and microeconometric techniques we derive the welfare function which makes the current German tax and transfer system for single women optimal. Furthermore, we compare the welfare function conditional on the presence and age of children and assess how reforms of in-kind childcare transfers would affect the welfare function. This analysis allows us to derive conclusions about the optimal design of child related transfers and in-kind benefits.

This paper is concerned with the question of how couples should be taxed. One reason for the importance of this issue is simply that the overwhelming majority of individuals live in households formed around couples, and so it could be argued that empirically, this is the single most important problem in personal income taxation. A second reason is that the economic theory of optimal taxation and tax reform, at least as it is presented in the mainstream literature, provides little guidance on this issue, resting as it does on models of the single person household. An old insight in the earlier public finance literature is that any discussion of the taxation of two-person households necessarily involves the recognition of the importance of household production. In this paper we try to show how a simple model of household production can be used to help the analysis of optimal taxation and tax reform, and to put the conventional wisdom, which says that it is optimal to tax women on a separate, lower tax schedule than men, on a firmer basis. What emerges clearly from the analysis is how centrally important the relationship between productivity in household production and female labour supply really is, and how little we know about it empirically.

Gender Based Taxation (GBT) satisfies Ramsey's optimal criterion by taxing less the more elastic labor supply of (married) women. This holds when different elasticities between men and women are taken as exogenous and primitive. But in this paper we also explore differences in gender elasticities which emerge endogenously in a model in which spouses bargain over the allocation of home duties. GBT changes spouses' implicit bargaining power and induces a more balanced allocation of house work and working opportunities between males and females. Because of decreasing returns to specialization in home and market work, social welfare improves by taxing conditional on gender. When income sharing within the family is substantial, both spouses may gain from GBT.

This paper estimates the marginal efficiency cost of redistribution (MECR) associated with a demogrant and an in-work benefit for the UK since 1979, taking account of extensive as well as intensive labour supply responses. The principal methodological advance in the paper is its greater allowance for heterogeneity in the population than previous work. The rate of tax on consumption expenditure is allowed to vary across households and overall tax rates are allowed to vary across all individuals in all years, using a microsimulation methodology for the calculations. This disaggregation makes a substantial difference to the results. The central finding of the paper is that the MECR is much lower for the in-work benefit policy than the demogrant. The efficiency loss associated with a marginal in-work benefit has consistently been low (and occasionally negative): even at its current 25-year high, the policy would cost losers only £1.30 per pound that the gainers gained. By contrast, losers from a demogrant would currently lose £4.30 per pound that gainers received, higher than at other times over the last 15 years but still well short of the peak of £8.02 seen in 1981. Although precise estimates are highly sensitive to the overall levels of tax rates and elasticities, and also to the composition of the overall labour supply elasticity, the principal finding of a stark contrast between the two policies is robust. The paper also examines the effect of redistribution within family types. The inwork benefit policy looks even more favourable if paid to (and financed by) only singles; it looks less favourable if implemented only for childless couples. Increasing in-work benefits and/or cutting tax rates for lone parents have provided opportunities for Pareto-improving reforms to the tax and benefit system for most of the period since 1979.

This paper analyses the optimal tax policy and public provision of private goods when individuals differ in two respects: income-earning ability and rationality. Publicly provided goods should be overprovided or subsidised, relative to the decentralised optimum, if society's marginal valuation of them exceeds the individual valuation and if these goods help relax the self-selection constraints, formulated in a new way. Optimal marginal income tax rates are shown to differ from the standard rules if publicly provided goods and labour supply are related.

Persistently high unemployment rates have stimulated debates whether or not the tax transfer system may be partly responsible for this problem. In particular, it has been pointed out that low earnings are subject to very high marginal tax rates. Among possible reform options are the negative income tax, negative marginal tax rates, and workfare. The paper evaluates these options analytically and shows that negative marginal tax rates or workfare do not have the desired impact on welfare. Die anhaltend hohe Arbeitslosigkeit hat verstärkt zu Diskussionen geführt, ob das Steuer-Transfer-System hierfür mitverantwortlich sei. Dabei wurde insbesondere auf die sehr hohe implizite Grenzbelastung im untersten Einkommensbereich hingewiesen. Als Alternativen wurden eine negative Einkommensteuer, negative Grenzsteuersätze oder Arbeitsverpflichtungen für Transferempfänger vorgeschlagen. Die Arbeit würdigt diese Instrumente analytisch und zeigt, dass negative Grenzsteuersätze oder Arbeitsverpflichtungen nicht die erhofften Wohlfahrtswirkungen habe

This paper augments the theory of optimal linear income taxation by taking into account human capital accumulation as a dimension of labor supply. The distribution of earning potentials is endogenous because agents differ in the ability to learn. Taxation affects utilization rates of human capital through labor supply responses. The costs of education that are not deductible from the income tax distort the learning decision as well. We show theoretically that the trade-off between efficiency and equity is worsened. Quantitative analysis shows that the distortionary costs of taxation increase substantially when human capital formation is endogenous.

Die anhaltend hohe Arbeitslosigkeit hat verstärkt zu Diskussionen geführt, ob das Steuer-Transfer-System hierfür mitverantwortlich sei. Dabei wurde insbesondere auf die sehr hohe implizite Grenzbelastung im untersten Einkommensbereich hingewiesen. Als Alternativen wurden eine negative Einkommensteuer, negative Grenzsteuersätze oder Arbeitsverpflichtungen für Transferempfänger vorgeschlagen. Die Arbeit würdigt diese Instrumente analytisch und zeigt, daß negative Grenzsteuersätze oder Arbeitsverpflichtungen nicht die erhofften Wohlfahrtswirkungen haben.

This paper presents an endogenous growth model which features elastic labour supply in order to address the distortions created by labour income and consumption taxation. Introducing elastic labour into an AK model greatly changes the structure of the model and raises problems regarding the existence and the stability of a balanced growth path. Another important feature of this paper is the presence of environmental quality both in the utility and in the production functions and the requirement that the growth path of the economy be environmentally sustainable. Within the framework outlined, the focus of the analysis is on optimal taxation and on the effects of government policy on the growth path of the economy. The basic result is that even in this simple setting the interaction between the economic and the ecological system are complex and the policy outcomes crucially depend on the parameters of the model.

This paper analyses tax policy measures within a two sector endogenously growing economy with elastic labour supply. Pollution is modelled as a side product of physical capital stock used as a primary production factor in the final good sector. The framework allows to analyse consequences of isolated tax changes or of a revenue neutral environmental tax reform for economic growth. Although pollution does not affect directly production processes, it can be shown that a higher pollution tax or a revenue neutral environmental tax reform boosts economic growth, whereas a tax on capital, consumption or labour reduces the long term growth rate of the economy.