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Income Tax and Top Incomes over the Twentieth Century

Author

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  • A. B. Atkinson

    (Nuffield College, Oxford)

Abstract

The first section of the paper gives a stylised account of the development of the UK income tax structure over the past 200 years, and refers to recent changes in other OECD countries. The second section turns to the distribution of income and summarises the evidence about the top of the income distribution that can be derived from the income tax data. The main results relate to the UK, but comparisons are made with similar evidence for Canada, France, the Netherlands, and the US. The third part of the paper considers the explanation of the observed changes in the distribution and the impact of progressive income taxation. How far are changes in income shares a reflection of the re-arrangement of income? How far are they associated with changes in the composition of top incomes? Conclusions about distributional incidence have to be based on modelling the determination of the personal income distribution, but such modelling is not typically treated in public finance textbooks. The fourth section of the paper considers how the analysis of distributional incidence can be developed, paying specific attention to the explanation of the upper tail of the distribution

Suggested Citation

  • A. B. Atkinson, 2004. "Income Tax and Top Incomes over the Twentieth Century," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 168(1), pages 123-141, march.
    • Handle: RePEc:hpe:journl:y:2004:v:168:i:1:p:123-141
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    Cited by:

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    2. Frank A. Cowell & Maria-Pia Victoria-Feser, 2008. "Modelling Lorenz Curves: Robust and Semi-parametric Issues," Economic Studies in Inequality, Social Exclusion, and Well-Being, in: Duangkamon Chotikapanich (ed.), Modeling Income Distributions and Lorenz Curves, chapter 13, pages 241-253, Springer.
    3. Frank Cowell & Maria-Pia Victoria-Feser, 2007. "Robust stochastic dominance: A semi-parametric approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 5(1), pages 21-37, April.
    4. Jukka Pirttilä & Hakan Selin, 2011. "Tax Policy and Employment: How Does the Swedish System Fare?," CESifo Working Paper Series 3355, CESifo.
    5. Marat Ibragimov & Rustam Ibragimov, 2018. "Heavy tails and upper-tail inequality: The case of Russia," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 823-837, March.
    6. Cabral, René & García-Díaz, Rocío & Mollick, André Varella, 2016. "Does globalization affect top income inequality?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 916-940.
    7. Peter Ericson & Lennart Flood & Nizamul Islam, 2015. "Taxes, wages and working hours," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 503-535, September.
    8. Anjan K. Saha & Vinod Mishra & Russell Smyth, 2021. "Financial development and top income shares in OECD countries," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 87(3), pages 952-978, January.
    9. Alfani, Guido, 2023. "Inequality in History: A Long-Run View," SocArXiv 94dgs, Center for Open Science.
    10. Roine, Jesper & Vlachos, Jonas & Waldenström, Daniel, 2009. "The long-run determinants of inequality: What can we learn from top income data?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 974-988, August.
    11. Francisco M. Gonzalez & Jean‐François Wen, 2015. "A Theory of Top Income Taxation and Social Insurance," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(587), pages 1474-1500, September.
    12. A. B. Atkinson, 2005. "Top incomes in the UK over the 20th century," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 168(2), pages 325-343, March.
    13. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & Bin Peng & Russell Smyth & Quanda Zhang, 2022. "R&D intensity and income inequality in the G7: 1870–2016," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 69(3), pages 263-282, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    . : Income; Taxation; Income Distribution; Tax Incidence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

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