This document is the web appendix for Optimal Tax Policy and the Symmetries of Ignorance (June 2011). University of Pennsylvania, Institute for Law & Economic Research Paper No. 11-19; U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 11-21. Available at SSRN: "http://ssrn.com/abstract=1856123"...

In 1927 the mathematician Frank Ramsey published a paper on optimal taxation in which he put forward what has come to be known as the “Ramsey rule”. Nearly one hundred years later, Ramsey’s paper remains a go-to reference for normative tax theory in a number of fields, including legal...

This posting is the mathematical appendix to Sanchirico, Chris William, Why the Optimal Long-Run Tax Rate on Capital is Zero…Or Very High: The Missing Explanation (April 30, 2020). U of Penn, Inst for Law & Econ Research Paper No. 20-33. Available at SSRN: "https://ssrn.com/abstract=3589720"...

Judd's (1985) finding that the optimal long-run rate of tax on capital is zero—even if equity is an important social objective—has exerted substantial influence in academic and policy circles over the last quarter century. Only very recently has it become clear that Judd's zero-tax result...

The literature on optimal redistributional instruments begins with the assumption that society has some preference for equality, leaving the precise degree unspecified. It then asks: How should society pursue that preference? More specifically, what kinds of policy instruments — whether...

What government-observable characteristics should determine the taxes that an individual pays and/or the transfers that she receives? This article focuses on a specific aspect of this fundamental question of tax policy: the implications of policymakers' uncertainty regarding the outcomes of tax...

In the literature on optimal taxation, a “tag” is a government-observable taxpayer attribute that is effectively immutable – like blindness, race, gender, or even height. Conventional optimal tax theory prescribes that tags should be included in the tax base so long as they are in some way...

This paper, which is not a standalone document, is the web appendix referenced inChris William Sanchirico, The Ramsey Rule at 100: Pairing Back the Overgrowth, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, Institute for Law and Economics, Research Paper no. 21-25,...

A kind of folk theorem in tax policy states that too much uncertainty about the impact of taxing (or subsidizing) a particular taxable attribute is cause for excluding that attribute from the tax base. I extend the optimal tax model to test this hypothesis. In my model, the government is not...