Survey evidence shows that the magnitude of the tax liability plays a role in value judgements about which groups deserve tax breaks. We demonstrate that the German tax-transfer system conflicts with a welfarist inequality averse social planner. It is consistent with a planner who is averse to...

We study optimal tax design based on the idea that policy-makers face trade-offs between multiple margins of redistribution. Within a Mirrleesian economy with earnings, consumption and retirement savings, we derive a novel formula for optimal income and savings distortions based on...

Globalization and automation might imply deep changes on the labour market. An important policy issue is whether and how the tax-transfer rules should be reformed to cope with those changes. While the prevailing response has consisted of more sophisticated designs of mean-testing and targeting,...

Half of the jobs in the U.S. feature pay-for-performance. We derive novel incidence and optimum formulas for the overall rate of tax progressivity and the top tax rates on total earnings and bonuses, when such labor contracts arise from moral hazard frictions within firms. Optimal taxes account...

In this empirical study we assess both linear and nonlinear relationship between total taxation and several tax items with real per capita GDP growth rates for 43 developing countries between 1990 and 2019. We use panel data techniques to evaluate the effects of taxation on economic growth for...