abstract tax is one of the main sources of financing government budget. therefore, having a clear picture about the attainable amount of taxes are not only necessary for optimal allocation of scarce resources for tax collection, but also helps the government to develop precise tax collection programs .in this article, the structural features of the tax revenues series have first been examined i...

The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) has a dual-frame sample design that supplements a standard area-probability frame with a sample of observations drawn from statistical records derived from tax returns. The tax-based frame is stratified on the basis of a “wealth index” constructed largely from observed income flows, with the intent of heavily oversampling wealthy households. Although the SC...

The Vanishing Bequest Tax: The Comparative Evolution of Bequest Taxation in Historical Perspective Several countries have recently abolished or significantly reduced their taxes on bequests. Bequest taxes, on the other hand, were among the first to be introduced when modern systems of taxation were developed at the end of the nineteenth century. We propose an explanation for these facts which i...

Driven by high government deficits and an unevenly distributed tax burden, recent debates on economic policy have revolved mostly around reforms in the American tax codes. Consumption tax reforms are considered to circumvent the efficiency-equity tradeoff that other reforms might encounter. This paper studies long run consequences of changing to a consumption tax regime, as well as short run we...

In this paper, we review the existing empirical evidence on how individuals respond to incentives created by a net wealth tax. Variation in overall magnitude of behavioural responses is substantial: estimates elasticity taxable vary factor 800. We explore three key reasons for variation: tax design, context and methodology. then discuss what known about importance individual margins response th...

We examine the relationship between economic growth, tax policy, and the distribution of capital and labor ownership in a one-sector political-economy model of endogenous growth with productive government spending Þnanced by a proportional tax on capital income. Our analysis shows that inequality in wealth and income can be positively or negatively related to the optimal tax rate. In either env...

The aim of this paper is to examine the concentration of wealth among the group of top wealth holders, defined as those with wealth in excess of a high cut off. The paper begins by considering the definition of this cut off, analogous to the definition of a poverty line at the other end of the distribution. It then considers what can be learned about the proportion classified as ‘rich’ and abou...

In this paper, I consider a dynamic economy in which a government needs to finance a stochastic process of purchases. The agents in the economy are privately informed about their skills, which evolve stochastically over time in an arbitrary fashion. I construct an optimal tax system that is restricted to be linear in an agent’s wealth but can be arbitrarily nonlinear in his current and past lab...

Since its introduction in 1916, the estate tax has been one of the most controversial parts of the United States tax code. Estate tax opponents dub it a “death tax,” claim that it hurts business activity and job creation, and assert that its negative effects are thus felt by all households, including those that never pay the tax. For these reasons, they call for abolishing it. In contrast, its ...