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Optimal Income Taxation
Optimal labour income tax is a sub-area of optimal tax, optimal tax theory which refers to the study of designing income tax, a tax on individual labour income such that a given economic criterion like social welfare is optimized. Efficiency-Equity tradeoff The modern literature on optimal labour income taxation largely follows from James Mirrlees' "Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation". The approach is based on asymmetric information, as the government is assumed to be unable to observe the number of hours people work or how productive they are, but can observe individuals' incomes. This imposes incentive compatibility constraints that limit the taxes which the government is able to levy, and prevents it from taxing high-productivity people at higher rates than low-productivity people. The government seeks to maximise a Utilitarianism, utilitarian social welfare function subject to these constraints. It faces a tradeoff between efficiency and equity: * Higher le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optimal Tax
Optimal tax theory or the theory of optimal taxation is the study of designing and implementing a tax that maximises a social welfare function subject to economic constraints. The social welfare function used is typically a function of individuals' utilities, most commonly some form of utilitarian function, so the tax system is chosen to maximise the aggregate of individual utilities. Tax revenue is required to fund the provision of public goods and other government services, as well as for redistribution from rich to poor individuals. However, most taxes distort individual behavior, because the activity that is taxed becomes relatively less desirable; for instance, taxes on labour income reduce the incentive to work. The optimization problem involves minimizing the distortions caused by taxation, while achieving desired levels of redistribution and revenue. Some taxes are thought to be less distorting, such as lump-sum taxes (where individuals cannot change their behaviour to red ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |