The Optimal Linear Income-tax
The Optimal Linear Income-tax
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最优线性所得税
DOI：
10.2307/2296360
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发表时间：
1972
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
E. Sheshinski
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
E. Sheshinski
所得税中的公平和效率考虑之间的冲突是一个常见的问题，但尚未制定兼顾这两种考虑的一般规则。Mirrlees [2]在一个具体模型的基础上，最近对各种实例进行了分析和计算。在这些例子中，最佳所得税税率表似乎是累进的，低收入者负税。最佳边际税率大致恒定在60%左右，但不知道这些结果对模型的各种假设有多敏感。在Mirrlees的模型中，假设个人最大化依赖于消费和劳动的相同效用函数。劳动回报被认为部分取决于与每个人相关的先天技能因素。通过个人决策，技能在人口中的分配产生了劳动、消费和效用的分配。然后引入所得税，以改善收入分配和社会福利，定义为个人效用的总和。3在本文中，我们使用上述模型来证明以下结果：如果经济中的劳动力供给是净工资率的非递减函数，那么在线性税收函数中，最优税收计划在零收入时提供正的一次性总付，最优边际税率的上限是一个随着劳动力供给弹性最小而下降的分数。[4]可以注意到，这个结果并不依赖于任何关于个人效用函数形式的假设，也不依赖于人口中潜在的能力分布。
The conflict between equity and efficiency considerations in income taxation is a familiar problem, but no general rules that take both of these considerations into account have yet been established. On the basis of a concrete model, a variety of examples has been recently analyzed and calculated by Mirrlees [2]. In these examples, the optimal income tax schedule appears to be progressive with a negative tax at low incomes. The optimal marginal tax rate is approximately constant in the vicinity of 60 per cent. It is not known, however, how sensitive these results are with respect to various assumptions of the model. In Mirrlees' model, individuals are assumed to maximize identical utility functions that depend on consumption and labour. The return to labour is assumed to depend partly on an innate skill factor associated with each individual. Through individual decisions, the distribution of skill in the population generates distributions of labour, consumption, and utility. Income taxation is then introduced in order to improve income distribution and social welfare, defined as the sum of individual utilities.3 In this paper we use the above model to prove the following result: if the supply of labour in the economy is a non-decreasing function of the net wage rate then, among linear tax functions, the optimal tax schedule provides a positive lump-sum at zero income, and the optimal marginal tax rate is bounded above by a fraction that decreases with the minimum elasticity of the labour supply.4 It may be noted that this result does not depend on any assumption about the form of the individual utility functions or on the underlying distribution of ability in the population.