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We investigate the role of preferences in the existence of expectation-driven instability under a balanced budget rule where government spendings are financed by a tax on labor income. Considering a one-sector neoclassical growth model with a large class of preferences, we find that expectation-driven fluctuations are more likely when consumption and labor are Edgeworth substitutes. Under this property, an intermediate range of tax rates and a sufficiently low elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption lead to instability. Numerical simulations of the model support the conclusion that labor income taxation is a plausible source of instability in most OECD countries.

We investigate the role of preferences in the existence of expectation-driven instability under a balanced budget rule where government spendings are financed by a tax on labor income. Considering a one-sector neoclassical growth model with a large class of preferences, we find that expectation-driven fluctuations are more likely when consumption and labor are Edgeworth substitutes. Under this property, an intermediate range of tax rates and a sufficiently low elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption lead to instability. Numerical simulations of the model support the conclusion that labor income taxation is a plausible source of instability in most OECD countries.

We investigate the role of preferences in the existence of expectation-driven instability under a balanced budget rule where government spendings are financed by a tax on labor income. Considering a one-sector neoclassical growth model with a large class of preferences, we find that expectation-driven fluctuations are more likely when consumption and labor are Edgeworth substitutes. Under this property, an intermediate range of tax rates and a sufficiently low elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption lead to instability. Numerical simulations of the model support the conclusion that labor income taxation is a plausible source of instability in most OECD countries.

This paper considers optimal linear and non-linear labor income taxation, which is fair and efficient distribution of the tax incidence or tax burden across individuals with different earnings.There exists a large economic literature that casts light on the issue of optimal labor income taxation. Models in optimal tax theory typically posit that the tax system should maximize a social welfare function subject to a government budget constraint, considering how individuals respond to taxes and transfers. Social welfare is larger when resources are more equally distributed, but redistributive taxes and transfers can negatively affect incentives to work and earn income in the first place. This creates the classical trade-off between equity and efficiency which is at the core of the optimal labor income tax problem. This paper attempts critical survey on the main findings of this literature. This paper is finishing with the numerical solutions to optimal linear and nonlinear taxation.

A tax buyout is a contract between tax authorities and a tax payer which reduces the marginal income tax rate in exchange for a lump-sum payment. While previous contributions have focussed on labour supply, we consider the interaction with tax evasion and show that a buyout can increase expected tax revenues. This will be the case if (1) the audit probability is constant and the penalty for evasion is a function of undeclared income or (2) the penalty depends on the amount of taxes evaded, and authorities use information about income generated by the decision about a tax buyout offer when setting audit probabilities. Since individuals will only utilise a tax buyout if they are better off, higher tax revenues imply that such contracts can be Pareto-improving.

We examine the impact of balanced-budget labor income taxes on the existence of expectation- driven business cycles in a two-sector version of the Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe (SGU) [18] model with constant government expenditures and counter-cyclical taxes. Our results show that the destabilizing impact of labor income taxes strongly depends on the capital intensity difference across sectors. Local indeterminacy is indeed more likely when the consumption good sector is capital intensive, as the minimal tax rate decreases, and less likely when the investment good sector is capital intensive, as the minimal tax rate increases. The implication of this result can be quantitatively significant. Indeed, when compared to SGU, local indeterminacy can be either completely ruled out for all OECD countries when the investment good is sufficiently capital intensive, or drastically improved, delivering indeterminacy for a larger set of OECD countries, if the consumption good is sufficiently capital intensive. Focusing however on recent estimates of the sectoral capital shares corresponding to the empirically plausible case of a capital intensive consumption good, we find that there is a significant increase of the range of economically relevant labor tax rates (from a minimum tax rate of 30% to 24.7%) for which local indeterminacy arises with respect to the aggregate formulation of SGU.

We examine the impact of balanced-budget labor income taxes on the existence of expectation- driven business cycles in a two-sector version of the Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe (SGU) [18] model with constant government expenditures and counter-cyclical taxes. Our results show that the destabilizing impact of labor income taxes strongly depends on the capital intensity difference across sectors. Local indeterminacy is indeed more likely when the consumption good sector is capital intensive, as the minimal tax rate decreases, and less likely when the investment good sector is capital intensive, as the minimal tax rate increases. The implication of this result can be quantitatively significant. Indeed, when compared to SGU, local indeterminacy can be either completely ruled out for all OECD countries when the investment good is sufficiently capital intensive, or drastically improved, delivering indeterminacy for a larger set of OECD countries, if the consumption good is sufficiently capital intensive. Focusing however on recent estimates of the sectoral capital shares corresponding to the empirically plausible case of a capital intensive consumption good, we find that there is a significant increase of the range of economically relevant labor tax rates (from a minimum tax rate of 30% to 24.7%) for which local indeterminacy arises with respect to the aggregate formulation of SGU.

We examine the impact of balanced-budget labor income taxes on the existence of expectation- driven business cycles in a two-sector version of the Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe (SGU) [18] model with constant government expenditures and counter-cyclical taxes. Our results show that the destabilizing impact of labor income taxes strongly depends on the capital intensity difference across sectors. Local indeterminacy is indeed more likely when the consumption good sector is capital intensive, as the minimal tax rate decreases, and less likely when the investment good sector is capital intensive, as the minimal tax rate increases. The implication of this result can be quantitatively significant. Indeed, when compared to SGU, local indeterminacy can be either completely ruled out for all OECD countries when the investment good is sufficiently capital intensive, or drastically improved, delivering indeterminacy for a larger set of OECD countries, if the consumption good is sufficiently capital intensive. Focusing however on recent estimates of the sectoral capital shares corresponding to the empirically plausible case of a capital intensive consumption good, we find that there is a significant increase of the range of economically relevant labor tax rates (from a minimum tax rate of 30% to 24.7%) for which local indeterminacy arises with respect to the aggregate formulation of SGU.

PurposeAn important concern of economic policy analysis is how income taxes affect labor supply since this is crucial in assessing the efficiency costs of taxation and designing labor income taxation. The focus in the literature has been mostly to study the responses of high earners and women. The authors contribute to this literature by focusing more on how middle earners respond to financial incentives and whether the responses are different between men and women.Design/methodology/approachThe authors exploit substantial expansions in the level of individual income exempt from taxation and taxed at a lower marginal tax rate while the schedule of marginal tax rates remained the same. The authors adopt an empirical framework that is similar to Bosch and van der Klaauw (2012) and condition on the effects of other factors, such as inflows of foreign workers that may have affected the wages, participation and working hours of native males and females. The authors also conduct various sensitivity analyses to examine the robustness of the estimates.FindingsThe authors find robust evidence that the tax reforms increased the wages of medium and high educated married males and females significantly. They also had a positive impact on work participation that was more substantial for married women, especially the medium educated. The authors estimate significant positive own wage labor supply elasticities that are small and about the same for men and women when the authors condition on the labor outcome effects of inflows of EU and non-EU foreign workers, which changed the skill distribution of the economy and had a more significant impact on female labor outcomes. Smaller wage labor supply elasticities indicate lower disincentive effects and deadweight losses from the imposition of taxes and have implications on the design of optimal taxation of men and women.Originality/valuePrevious investigations of the labor supply responses of both men and women to a given policy change have been identified mostly by exploiting changes in joint income taxation and marginal tax rates. The authors exploit substantial expansions in the level of individual income exempt from taxation and taxed at a lower marginal tax rate while the schedule of marginal tax rates remained the same. The income effects of these reforms could be limited since the reduced marginal tax rates apply to only part of the income.