We analytically and quantitatively examine a prominent justi…cation for capital income taxation: goods preferred by those with high ability ought to be taxed. We study an environment where commodity taxes are allowed to be nonlinear functions of income and consumption and …nd that, when ability is positively related to a preference for a good, optimal marginal commodity taxes on this good may b...

[ Journa © 2013 market. We study this problem in the context of a directed search model of the labor market populated by homogeneous workers and heterogeneous firms. The optimal redistribution can be attained using a positive unemployment benefit and an increasing and regressive labor income tax. The positive unemployment benefit serves the purpose of lowering the search risk faced by workers. ...

This paper estimates that the US could attain large welfare gains by implementing an optimal Ramsey tax policy that taxes consumption and income. It is also found that the welfare implications associated with taxing consumption are quantitatively more important than those associated with dynamically taxing income. Indeed, replacing income taxes with a constant consumption tax leads to a welfare...

Everyone knows that starting a business requires cash, and growing a business requires even more. But few people understand that a profitable company that tries to grow too fast can run out of cash even if its products are great successes. So a big challenge for managers of any growing concern is to strike the proper balance between consuming cash and generating it. Authors Neil Churchill and J...

This paper considers an optimal income tax cum higher education policy. It shows that in the presence of an optimal income tax system higher education should be taxed rather than subsidized. Furthermore, income taxes should become less progressive when an optimal higher education policy is introduced. JEL Classification: H21, I22. Berthold U. Wigger Department of Economics University of Mannhei...

Based on a representative data set of more than 36,000 original tax report extracts, we develop a microsimulation model that calculates the fiscal impact of changes in the area of tax deductible work-related expenses, in particular expenses for travelling from private home to the place of work, in Germany. The new model allows a more accurate estimation of the fiscal impact of changes in the Ge...

This paper presents series on top shares of income and wealth in Spain using personal income and wealth tax return statistics. Top income shares are highest in the 1930s, fall sharply during the first decade of the Franco dictatorship, then remain stable and low till the 1980s, and have increased since the mid 1990s. The top 0.01% income share in Spain estimated from income tax data is comparab...

Europe and Japan are experiencing the aging of their populations. Aging implies a restructuring of the economy. Political issues which arise in an aging society include 1) a voting majority for the interests of the elderly, 2) a voting majority of females, 3) the domination of the decision power in corporate and similar ruling bodies, and 4) unemployment or a long wait for promotion for young...

Abusive tax shelters implemented through partnerships and S corporations have become increasingly popular amongst tax planners, helping high-income taxpayers to underreport an estimated $91 billion of income annually in the US alone. The most challenging problems for tax collection agencies in this respect are a) the recent upswing in large, tiered partnership structures and b) the evolving nat...

The value of federal income-tax deductions, such as the home mortgage interest deduction (MID), varies across geographic regions. Taxpayers in regions with relatively high incomes, state and local income taxes, and housing costs are more likely to utilize deductions; that is, they are more likely to itemize, more likely to have a larger deduction conditional on itemizing, and more likely to get...