IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/macdyn/v9y2005i04p469-477_04.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Taxing Capital Income As Pigouvian Correction: The Role Of Discounting The Future

Author

Listed:
  • DE BONIS, VALERIA
  • SPATARO, LUCA

Abstract

In this work, we find that the zero capital income tax result might not hold, even at the steady state, when the government discount rate differs from the individual one. As intuitive Pigouvian considerations would suggest, capital income should be taxed (subsidized) when the government is less (more) impatient than individuals are. However, a counterintuitive asymmetry emerges as for the steady state since, in the long run, capital income cannot be taxed because of the explosive distortionary effect of positive taxes. The asymmetry is ruled out with a logarithmic utility function because, in this case, the anticipated policy path does not affect current individual choices and thus the cumulative distortionary effect of taxes disappears.

Suggested Citation

  • De Bonis, Valeria & Spataro, Luca, 2005. "Taxing Capital Income As Pigouvian Correction: The Role Of Discounting The Future," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(4), pages 469-477, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:macdyn:v:9:y:2005:i:04:p:469-477_04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1365100505040319/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Garriga, Carlos & Sánchez-Losada, Fernando, 2009. "Indirect taxation and the welfare effects of altruism on the optimal fiscal policy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1365-1374, November.
    2. Valeria De Bonis, 2016. "Innovation, competition and public procurement in the pre-commercial phase," Public Finance Research Papers 23, Istituto di Economia e Finanza, DSGE, Sapienza University of Rome.
    3. Reis, Catarina, 2012. "Social discounting and incentive compatible fiscal policy," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(6), pages 2469-2482.
    4. Nina Biljanovska & Alexandros Vardoulakis, 2017. "Capital Taxation with Heterogeneous Discounting and Collateralized Borrowing," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-053, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Valeria Bonis & Luca Spataro, 2018. "Optimal income taxation and migration," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(4), pages 867-882, August.
    6. Biljanovska, Nina & Vardoulakis, Alexandros P., 2019. "Capital taxation with heterogeneous discounting and collateralized borrowing," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 97-109.
    7. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2015. "In Praise of Frank Ramsey's Contribution to the Theory of Taxation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(583), pages 235-268, March.
    8. Valeria De Bonis & Luca Spataro, 2010. "Social discounting, migration, and optimal taxation of savings," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 62(3), pages 603-623, July.
    9. Thomas I. Renström & Luca Spataro, 2021. "Optimal taxation in an endogenous growth model with variable population and public expenditure," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 23(4), pages 639-659, August.
    10. Spataro, Luca & Renström, Thomas I., 2012. "Optimal taxation, critical-level utilitarianism and economic growth," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 727-738.
    11. Rieth, Malte, 2017. "Capital taxation and government debt policy with public discounting," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 1-20.
    12. Thomas Renstrom & Luca Spataro, 2015. "An analysis on optimal taxation and on policy changes in an endogenous growth model with public expenditure," Public Finance Research Papers 12, Istituto di Economia e Finanza, DSGE, Sapienza University of Rome.
    13. Spataro, Luca & De Bonis, Valeria, 2008. "Accounting for the "disconnectedness" of the economy in OLG models: A case for taxing capital income," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 411-421, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:macdyn:v:9:y:2005:i:04:p:469-477_04. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/mdy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.