the popular debate that is dominated by American economists. This debate concerns the US estate tax, which is one, among … many, types of wealth transfer tax. After addressing the main issues prevailing in this debate and discussing the lack of … popular support for such tax, the paper adopts a more theoretical approach to explore the pluses and the minuses of a wealth …

simple theoretical model of taxation and restrict our attention to piece-wise linear tax methods, which are almost ubiquitous …

where agents differ in income, probability of becoming dependent and of receiving family help. Uniform social benefits are … financed with a proportional income tax and are thus redistributive, while private insurance is actuarially fair. We obtain a …

is devoted to explaining the direct-indirect tax mix. Our purpose is to show that if different taxes have different … evasion characteristics, some optimal tax mix emerges naturally. Assuming that only income tax can be evaded and focusing on a …

anonymously, whereas the tax on labour earnings can be individualized and made non-linear. In such a setting, we show that a with …- holding tax on interest income along with a non-linear tax on labour income is desirable. The role of interest income taxation … is to indirectly tax inherited wealth. …

of individuals, the workers and the capital owners. A source-based tax on capital income is used to finance transfers to …

preferences are unobservable, we use these social welfare functions to design optimal income tax schemes. We obtain ethical … foundations for, among others, a maximized minimal income, a zero marginal tax rate for low incomes, and increasing marginal tax …