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The Tax Unit and Household Production

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Author Info
John Piggott
John Whalley

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Abstract

The conventional wisdom is that taxing individuals rather than households is superior from an efficiency point of view under progressive income taxation. This is because it leads to secondary workers, whose labour supply elasticity is high, being taxed at a lower marginal rate than primary workers, whose labour supply elasticity is low. But once household production is taken into account, things are more complicated since tax design should also not distort the input use of family members' time in household production. We use a simple general equilibrium model of household production parameterized using Australian data whose results clearly show that welfare effects can be either positive or negative when changing an existing income tax from an individual to a household basis. In so doing, we are able to investigate the comparative static effects of changing the tax unit from an individual to the household basis in a richer model than that used thus far in the literature, since we capture both Ramsey considerations from differential labour supply elasticities, and factor input distortions into household production. Our results challenge conventional wisdom, and suggest that household unit taxation deserves more sympathetic consideration than is currently the case.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 4820.

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Date of creation: Aug 1994
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4820

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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.:
  1. Kay, J. A., 1980. "The deadweight loss from a tax system," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 111-119, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Berndt, Ernst R, 1976. "Reconciling Alternative Estimates of the Elasticity of Substitution," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 58(1), pages 59-68, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Haurin, Donald R & Hendershott, Patric H & Kim, Dongwook, 1993. "The Impact of Real Rents and Wages on Household Formation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(2), pages 284-93, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Killingsworth, Mark R. & Heckman, James J., 1987. "Female labor supply: A survey," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 103-204 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Boskin, Michael J., 1975. "Efficiency aspects of the differential tax treatment of market and household economic activity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 1-25, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Wales, T J & Woodland, A D, 1976. "Estimation of Household Utility Functions and Labor Supply Response," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 17(2), pages 397-410, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Wales, Terence J & Woodland, A D, 1977. "Estimation of the Allocation of Time for Work, Leisure, and Housework," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(1), pages 115-32, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Daniel R. Feenberg & Harvey S. Rosen, 1995. "Recent Developments in the Marriage Tax," NBER Working Papers 4705, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Rosen, Harvey S, 1978. "The Measurement of Excess Burden with Explicit Utility Functions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(2), pages S121-35, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Kakwani, Nanok C, 1977. "Measurement of Tax Progressivity: An International Comparison," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 87(345), pages 71-80, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, 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.)

  1. Keshab Bhattarai & John Whalley, 1997. "Discreteness and the Welfare Cost of Labor Supply Tax Distortions," NBER Working Papers 6280, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. John Piggott & John Whalley, 1998. "VAT Base Broadening, Self Supply, and The Informal Sector," NBER Working Papers 6349, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Edgar Cudmore & John Piggott & John Whalley, 2008. "Income Tax Design and the Desirability of Subsidies to Secondary Workers in a Household Model with Joint and Non-Joiont Time," University of Western Ontario, RBC Financial Group Economic Policy Research Institute Working Papers 20084, University of Western Ontario, RBC Financial Group Economic Policy Research Institute. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Alberto Alesina & Andrea Ichino & Loukas Karabarbounis, 2007. "Gender Based Taxation and the Division of Family Chores," IZA Discussion Papers 3233, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Javier Ferri & María Luisa Moltó & Ezequiel Uriel, . "Time use, computable general equilibrium and tax policy analysis," Studies on the Spanish Economy 202, FEDEA. [Downloadable!]
  6. Madanmohan Ghosh & John Whalley, 2000. "State-Owned Enterprises, Shirking and Trade Liberalization," NBER Working Papers 7696, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  7. Oddbjørn Raaum & Bernt Bratsberg & Knut Røed & Eva Österbacka & Tor Eriksson & Markus Jäntti & Robin Naylor, 2007. "Marital Sorting, Household Labor Supply, and Intergenerational Earnings Mobility across Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 3037, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  8. Sara LaLumia, 2006. "The Effects of Joint Taxation of Married Couples on Labor Supply and Non-wage Income," Working Papers 28, Department of Economics, College of William and Mary. [Downloadable!]
  9. Volker Meier & Matthias Wrede, 2008. "Reducing the Excess Burden of Subsidizing the Stork: Joint Taxation, Individual Taxation, and Family Tax Splitting," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
  10. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Claus Thustrup Kreiner, 2001. "On the Optimality of Joint Taxation with Household Production," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
  11. Patricia Apps & Ray Rees, 2007. "The Taxation of Couples," Discussion Papers 07/21, Department of Economics, University of York. [Downloadable!]
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  12. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Claus Thustrup Kreiner, 2004. "Optimal Taxation of Married Couples with Household Production," EPRU Working Paper Series 04-10, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  13. Thomas F. Crossley & Sung-Hee Jeon, 2006. "Joint Taxation and the Labour Supply of Married Women: Evidence from the Canadian Tax Reform of 1988," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 149, McMaster University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  14. Jie Zhang & James Davies & Jinli Zeng & Stuart McDonald, . "Optimal taxation in a growth model with public consumption and home production," MRG Discussion Paper Series 1707, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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