The importance of capital loss offset provisions in a world of risk is well documented in the tax literature. However, the potential deadweight losses owing to imperfect offset has not been fully explored. This paper develops a framework whereby that investigation can be carried out and utilizes numerical simulations to investigate the size of potential losses. Results show that when the government and private sector are equally efficient in handling market risk, welfare losses owing to the absence of offset provisions could be substantial. Under plausible assumptions about attitudes towards risk and time preference, and with a capital income tax rate of forty percent, over sixty cents per dollar of tax revenue raised would be dissipated. In contrast, full loss offset would reduce that loss to approximately fourteen cents.
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 2203.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Jeremy I. Bulow & Lawrence H. Summers, 1984.
"The Taxation of Risky Assets,"
NBER Working Papers
0897, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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