Preference responsibility versus poverty reduction in the taxation of labor incomes
中文摘要
我们研究使社会福利函数最大化的税收方案, 这些社会福利函数建立在'个人偏好责任'公理与'减贫'公理之上, 前者要求社会福利函数对工资相同的个体一视同仁, 而不论其偏好如何。我们发现, 在最优税收下, 低收入段的边际税率为零或为负, 且在最勤奋工作的最低工资家庭的收入水平上出现聚束。当偏好为等弹性时, 我们推导出最优税收公式, 并将其校准至美国经济。我们的公式近似刻画了美国现行税收函数在至少有一个孩子的家庭上的形状。这一结果表明, 基于公平的研究路径——尤其是这些公理——有助于弥合最优税收理论的政策建议与实际政策之间的差距。
Abstract
We study the tax schemes that maximize social welfare functions built on axioms of responsibility for one’s preferences (the requirement that the social welfare function should treat identically agents with the same wage, independently of their preferences) and poverty reduction. We find zero and negative marginal tax rates on low incomes at the optimum and bunching at the income level of the most hardworking minimum wage households. When preferences are iso-elastic, we derive the optimal tax formula, which we calibrate to the US economy. Our formula approximates the shape of the current US tax function for households with at least one child. This result suggests that a fairness-based approach, and these axioms in particular, can help close the gap between the recommendations of optimal tax theory and actual policies.