Labor Income Tax Research Articles

Government Financing with Taxes or Inflation

We calculate the effects of an increase in government spending under two financing alternatives: labor income taxes or inflation. A standard cash-in-advance model implies that it is optimal to finance the increase in spending with inflation rather than with taxes. We allow agents to choose the moment in which they adjust their portfolio. This change reverses the conclusion. The welfare cost of financing the government with inflation becomes higher. The robustness of this result is studied by considering government spending in the form of transfers or consumption expenditures and alternative definitions of seigniorage.

Positional preferences in time and space: Optimal income taxation with dynamic social comparisons

This paper concerns optimal redistributive non-linear income taxation in an OLG model, where people care about their own consumption relative to (i) other people's current consumption, (ii) own past consumption, and (iii) other people's past consumption. We show that both (i) and (iii) affect the marginal income tax structure whereas (ii) does not. We also derive conditions under which atemporal and intertemporal consumption comparisons give rise to exactly the same tax policy responses. On the basis of the available empirical estimates, comparisons with other people's current and past consumption tend to substantially increase the optimal marginal labor income tax rates. Yet, such comparisons may either increase or decrease the optimal marginal capital income tax rates.

Can an Ageing Scotland Afford Independence?

The aim and scope of this paper is to isolate the effects of population ageing in the context of potential Scottish independence. A dynamic multiregional Overlapping Generations Computable General Equilibrium (OLG-CGE) model is used to evaluate the two scenarios. The status quo scenario assumes that Scotland stays part of the UK and all government expenditures associated with its ageing population are funded on a UK-wide basis. In the independence scenario, Scotland and the rest of the UK pay for the growing demands of their ageing populations independently. The comparison suggests that Scotland is worse off in the case of independence. The effective labour income tax rate in the independence scenario has to increase further compared with the status quo scenario. The additional increase reaches its maximum in 2035 at 1.4 percentage points. The additional rise in the tax rate is non-negligible, but is much smaller than the population ageing effect (status quo scenario) which generates an increase of about 8.5 percentage points by 2060. The difference for government finances between the status quo and independence scenarios is thus relatively small.

Capital Wealth Taxation: Theory and Application

Using an ls model analysis, the economic effects of implementing a modest taxation rate on capital wealth (3%) are found to be basically favorable: slightly higher output, lower inequality as measured by various Gini coefficients, and higher social welfare according to the three major social welfare functions—Bentham, Nash and Rawls. Implementing capital wealth taxation enables a compensating reduction in the labor-income taxation rate. The single most important consequence of this change is increased labor output among the wealthiest households, whose labor productivity is highest. Even though labor output is reduced among less-wealthy households, the overall effect on aggregate output is positive.

How Does Tax Progressivity and Household Heterogeneity Affect Laffer Curves?

How much additional tax revenue can the government generate by increasing labor income taxes? In this paper we provide a quantitative answer to this question, and study the importance of the progressivity of the tax schedule for the ability of the government to generate tax revenues. We develop a rich overlapping generations model featuring an explicit family structure, extensive and intensive margins of labor supply, endogenous accumulation of labor market experience as well as standard intertemporal consumption-savings choices in the presence of uninsurable idiosyncratic labor productivity risk. We calibrate the model to US macro, micro and tax data and characterize the labor income tax Laffer curve under the current choice of the progressivity of the labor income tax code as well as when varying progressivity. We find that more progressive labor income taxes significantly reduce tax revenues. For the US, converting to a flat tax code raises the peak of the Laffer curve by 6%, whereas converting to a tax system with progressivity similar to Denmark would lower the peak by 7%. We also show that, relative to a representative agent economy tax revenues are less sensitive to the progressivity of the tax code in our economy. This finding is due to the fact that labor supply of two earner households is less elastic (along the intensive margin) and the endogenous accumulation of labor market experience makes labor supply of females less elastic (around the extensive margin) to changes in tax progressivity.

Optimal Income Taxation with Asset Accumulation

Several frictions restrict the government's ability to tax assets. First, it is very costly to monitor trades on international asset markets. Second, agents can resort to nonob- servable low-return assets such as cash, gold or foreign currencies if taxes on observable assets become too high. This paper shows that limitations in asset taxation have im- portant consequences for the taxation of labor income. Using a dynamic moral hazard model of social insurance, we find that optimal labor income taxes become less progres- sive when governments face limitations in asset taxation. We evaluate the quantitative effect of imperfect asset taxation for two applications of our model.

Comparative Evaluation of the Labour Income Taxation in the Baltic States

The present paper discusses the concept of labour income and its taxation by personal income tax, social security and health insurance contributions, presented in the literature. In order to reveal the influence of the basic tax elements on the evaluation of the level of the labour income taxation, comparative evaluation has been carried out. During the research, Latvia and Estonia, the countries that are closely related to Lithuania, have been compared. The results of the research have shown that the comparison of the basic tax indicators, such as non-taxable minimum income and standard rates, describes the national level of the labour income taxation only partially. A more accurate description of the tax level could be provided only after applying ratios and evaluating such factors as tax base and tax exemptions.

Beyond the Labour Income Tax Wedge: The Unemployment-Reducing Effect of Tax Progressivity

Beyond the Labour Income Tax Wedge: The Unemployment-Reducing Effect of Tax Progressivity

Tax Smoothing in a Business Cycle Model with Capital-Skill Complementarity

This paper undertakes a normative investigation of the quantitative properties of optimal tax smoothing in a business cycle model with state contingent debt, capital-skill complementarity, endogenous skill formation and stochastic shocks to public consumption as well as total factor and capital equipment productivity. Our main finding is that an empirically relevant restriction which does not allow the relative supply of skilled labour to adjust in response to aggregate shocks, signi cantly changes the cyclical properties of optimal labour taxes. Under a restricted relative skill supply, the government fi nds it optimal to adjust labour income tax rates so that the average net returns to skilled and unskilled labour hours exhibit the same dynamic behaviour as under fl exible skill supply.

Long-Term Labor Contracts and a Simple Welfare System

We examine an economy where workers have hidden innate abilities and firms offer employment contracts taking the labor income tax system as given. The main result shows that there exists a Bayesian Nash equilibrium of this economy which implements the second best outcome of Mirrlees (1971) if the labor market is competitive. We also provide sufficient conditions for this result to hold when parties can sign long-term employment contracts and workers receive private productivity shocks throughout their life-cycles.

Taxation of Human Capital and Wage Inequality: A Cross-Country Analysis

Wage inequality has been significantly higher in the United States than in continental European countries (CEU) since the 1970s. Moreover, this inequality gap has further widened during this period as the US has experienced a large increase in wage inequality, whereas the CEU has seen only modest changes. This paper studies the role of labor income tax policies for understanding these facts. We begin by documenting two new empirical facts that link these inequality differences to tax policies. First, we show that countries with more progressive labor income tax schedules have significantly lower before-tax wage inequality at different points in time. Second, progressivity is also negatively correlated with the rise in wage inequality during this period. We then construct a life cycle model in which individuals decide each period whether to go to school, work, or be unemployed. Individuals can accumulate skills either in school or while working. Wage inequality arises from differences across individuals in their ability to learn new skills as well as from idiosyncratic shocks. Progressive taxation compresses the (after-tax) wage structure, thereby distorting the incentives to accumulate human capital, in turn reducing the cross-sectional dispersion of (before-tax) wages. We find that these policies can account for half of the difference between the US and the CEU in overall wage inequality and 76% of the difference in inequality at the upper end (log 90-50 differential). When this economy experiences skill-biased technological change, progressivity also dampens the rise in wage dispersion over time. The model explains 41% of the difference in the total rise in inequality and 58% of the difference at the upper end.

Distributional and employment effects of labour tax changes in Finland

Labour income taxes in Finland decreased considerably during the period 1996–2008. At the same time the Finnish economy grew rapidly. Nevertheless, there was another coincidental trend in this period: a rapid rise in inequality. This study aims to answer to what extent labour income tax reductions between 1996 and 2008 contributed to this trend in inequality. The study also examines how much more employment was achieved owing to the labour tax reforms. To answer these questions, I build a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents. The model is calibrated to fit the Finnish economy. The study finds that the labour income tax cuts fractionally raised the Gini coefficient for net labour income. They also increased the concentration of wealth. The employment gains due to the reforms have been modest, but nevertheless significant.

Economic implications of reducing carbon emissions from energy use and industrial processes in Brazil

This study assesses the economy-wide impacts of cutting CO2 emissions on the Brazilian economy. It finds that in 2040, the business-as-usual CO2 emissions from energy use and industrial processes would be almost three times as high as those in 2010 and would account for more than half of total national CO2 emissions. The current policy aims to reduce deforestation by 70 percent by 2017 and lower emissions intensity of the overall economy by 36–39 percent by 2020. If the policy were implemented as planned and continued to 2040, there would be no need to cut CO2 emissions from energy use and industrial processes until 2035, as emissions reduction through controlling deforestation would be enough to meet the voluntary carbon mitigation target of Brazil. The study also finds that using the carbon tax revenue to subsidize wind power can effectively increase the country's wind power output if that is the policy priority. Further, it finds evidence supporting the double dividend hypothesis, i.e., using revenue from a hypothetical carbon tax to finance a cut in labor income tax can significantly lower the GDP impacts of the carbon tax.

THE WELFARE GAINS OF AGE‐RELATED OPTIMAL INCOME TAXATION

Using an overlapping generations model with skill uncertainty and private savings, we quantify the gains of age‐dependent labor income taxation. The total steady‐state welfare gain of switching from age‐independent to age‐dependent nonlinear taxation varies between 2.4% and 4% of GDP. Part of the gain descends from relaxing incentive–compatibility constraints and part is due to capital‐accumulation effects. The welfare gain is of about the same magnitude as that which can be achieved by moving from linear to nonlinear income taxation. Finally, the welfare loss from tax‐exempting interest income is negligible under an optimal age‐dependent labor income tax.

Old-age Social Security versus Forward Intergenerational Public Goods Provision

This paper introduces an overlapping-generations model with earnings heterogeneity and borrowing constraints. The labour income tax and the allocation of tax revenue between social security and forward intergenerational public goods are determined in a bidimensional majoritarian voting game played by successive generations. The political equilibrium is characterized by an ends-against-the-middle equilibrium where low-income and high-income individuals form a coalition in favour of a lower tax rate and less social security while middle-income individuals favour a higher tax rate and greater social security. Government spending then shifts from social security to public goods provision if higher wage inequality is associated with a borrowing constraint and a high elasticity of marginal utility of youth consumption.

Optimal Taxation in a Limited Commitment Economy

This paper studies optimal Ramsey taxation when risk sharing in private insurance markets is imperfect due to limited enforcement. In a limited commitment economy, there are externalities associated with capital and labor because individuals do not take into account that their labor and saving decisions affect aggregate supply, wages and thus the value of autarky. Due to these externalities, the Ramsey government has an additional goal, which is to internalize the externalities of labor and capital to improve risk sharing, in addition to its usual goal - minimizing distortions when financing government expenditures. These two goals drive capital and labor taxes in opposite directions. By balancing these conflicting goals, the steady-state optimal capital income taxes are levied only to remove the negative externality of the capital, and optimal labor income taxes are set to meet the budgetary needs of the government in the long run, despite positive externalities of labor.

Toward a Taylor rule for fiscal policy

In DSGE models, fiscal policy is typically described by simple rules in which tax rates respond to the level of output. We show that there is only weak empirical evidence in favor of such specifications in US data. Instead, the cyclical movements of labor and capital income tax rates are better described by a contemporaneous response to hours worked and investment, respectively. We show that conditioning on these variables is also desirable from a normative perspective as it significantly improves welfare relative to output-based rules.

Introduction

Introduction

Effective labor taxation and the international location of headquarters

Profit taxes are widely acknowledged to influence the location of firms’ headquarters. This paper sheds light on the role of aspects of labor taxation for the international location of headquarters. While profit taxes can be avoided in various ways, it is much harder for firms to manipulate the firm-specific labor tax base so that labor taxes may be relatively important for firm location. We construct a unique data set of effective labor taxes in 120 countries and use data on the location of 35,206 firms to analyze the impact of labor income tax rates, the progressivity of the income tax schedule, and social security contributions on firms’ decisions where to locate their headquarters. The findings suggest that both a higher progressivity of the tax system and higher (employee- and employer-borne) social security contributions negatively influence a country’s attractiveness for headquarters location. Hence, a one percentage point increase in these payroll taxes, reduces the probability of a country to attract headquarters by 6.1 %. The results prove robust in various empirical model specifications and subsets of the data.

Entrepreneurial Taxation with Endogenous Entry

I analyze the optimal taxation of profits and labor income under endogenous firm formation. Individuals differ in their skill and cost of setting up a firm, and can become workers or entrepreneurs. A tax system in which profits and labor income are subject to the same schedule uses general equilibrium effects through wages to indirectly redistribute across occupations. Optimal policies can involve low tax rates at the top and distortions of firms' input choices. However, these properties disappear under a differential treatment of profits and labor income. Then, redistribution is achieved directly through taxes and production efficiency is always optimal. (JEL H21, H24, H25, J24, L25, L26)