Optimal Nonlinear Income Taxation for Reduction of Envy

This paper examines the optimal nonlinear income taxation problem based on Chaudhuri (1986) and Diamantaras and Thomson's (1990) λ-equitability in a two-class economy. An allocation is λ-equitable if no agent envies a proportion λ of the bundle of any other agent. We examine the properties of Pareto undominated allocations for various λ-equitability requirements. When there is one output, the marginal income tax rate can increase only if (but not if) leisure is a luxury. In a multi-commodity model with commodity taxes, the goods preferred by the low skilled agent and/or of high Hicksian elasticities are taxed more heavily.