This paper develops a political economy model that is consistent with the fact that democracies have a preference for increasing marginal tax rates on income. We present a model in which there is an exogenous set of political parties with preferences over the set of admissible tax schedules....

The popular support for progressive income taxation theorem (Maruhenda and Ortuno-Ortin, 1995) provides an important formalization of the intuition that a majority of relatively poor voters over rich ones leads to progressive income taxation. Yet, the theorem does not provide an equilibrium...

The "popular support for progressive income taxation theorem" (Maruhenda and Ortuno-Ortin, 1995) provides an important formalization of the intuition that a majority of relatively poor voters over rich ones leads to progressive income taxation. Yet, the theorem does not provide an equilibrium...

A major problem of the positive theory of income taxation is to explain why statutory income tax schedules in practice are marginal-rate progressive. While it is commonly believed that this is but a simple consequence of the fact that the number of relatively poor voters exceeds that of richer...