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Optimal Income Taxation with Human Capital Accumulation and Limited Record Keeping

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  • Marek Kapicka

    (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Abstract

This paper characterizes optimal income taxes in a dynamic economy where human capital is unobservable and the government is restricted to use taxes that depend only on current income. I show that unobservability of human capital tends to decrease the labor wedge, while the effect on the human capital wedge is uncertain. I also analyze the relationship between optimal taxes in economies with and without endogenous human capital and identify two qualitative reasons why the optimal tax codes will differ. I perform numerical simulations to calculate the quantitative relevance of endogenous human capital formation for optimal tax policy. I find that endogenous human capital lowers marginal tax rates by about 9% on average, as compared with a static model without human capital. (Copyright: Elsevier)

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File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2006.05.003
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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics in its journal Review of Economic Dynamics.

Volume (Year): 9 (2006)
Issue (Month): 4 (October)
Pages: 612-639

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Handle: RePEc:red:issued:05-24

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Related research

Keywords: Optimal taxation; Income taxation; Human capital;

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References

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