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Taxing Capital: Not a Bad Idea After All

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Author Info
Juan C. Conesa
Dirk Krueger

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Abstract

In this paper we argue that it might not be such a bad idea to tax capital income in the long run. We address this question in an environment in which individuals are finitely lived and face uninsurable idiosyncratic labor income risk. In choosing a tax system a benevolent planner trades off concerns for equity and insurance with efficiency considerations. In our environment there are two ways of redistributing resources either via progressive labor income taxes or through the taxation of capital income. We show that the optimal tax mix depends crucially on the elasticity of the tax base. If the rich are relatively old and are both rich in terms of capital and labor income, then we demonstrate that the labor income tax base is very elastic to changes in labor income taxes while the capital income tax base is much more inelastic. Consequently it is optimal to tax capital instead of the labor income of the rich. Our results stand in sharp contrast with the standard zero capital taxation results derived in environments with infinitely lived agents and are complementary to recent findings on optimal fiscal policy in overlapping generations economies

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Society for Economic Dynamics in its series 2004 Meeting Papers with number 403.

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Date of creation: 2004
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Handle: RePEc:red:sed004:403

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Postal: Society for Economic Dynamics Anne Stubing CV Starr Center for Applied Economics 269 Mercer Street, Room 303 New York University New York, NY 10003
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Related research
Keywords: Public Economics Optimal Fiscal Policy

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy
H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation

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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.:

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Full references

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. Stefania Albanesi & Roc Armenter, 2007. "Intertemporal Distortions in the Second Best," Discussion Papers 0708-08, Columbia University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Juan Carlos Conesa & Dirk Krueger, 2005. "On the Optimal Progressivity of the Income Tax Code," CFS Working Paper Series 2005/10, Center for Financial Studies. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Karsten Jeske & Sagiri Kitao, 2007. "U.S. tax policy and health insurance demand: can a regressive policy improve welfare?," Working Paper 2007-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. [Downloadable!]
  4. Juergen Jung, 2008. "The Timing of Redistribution," Caepr Working Papers 2008-015, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Economics Department, Indiana University Bloomington. [Downloadable!]
  5. Charles Grant & Christos Koulovatianos & Alexander Michaelides & Mario Padula, 2006. "Evidence on the Insurance Effect of Redistributive Taxation," Vienna Economics Papers 1206, University of Vienna, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Sagiri Kitao, 2008. "Entrepreneurship, taxation and capital investment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(1), pages 44-69, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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