IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eecrev/v70y2014icp399-418.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the efficiency of equal sacrifice income tax schedules

Author

Listed:
  • da Costa, Carlos E.
  • Pereira, Thiago

Abstract

In an economy which primitives are exactly those in Mirrlees (1971), we investigate the efficiency of tax schedules derived under the equal sacrifice principle. For a given exogenous government consumption level we assess whether there is an alternative tax schedule that raises more revenue while delivering less utility to no one. For our preferred parametrizations, we find that inefficiency only arises at the top of the income distribution for marginal tax rates well above the ones we currently observe in most countries. We also recover the implicit marginal social weights associated with the equal sacrifice schedule and find them not to be monotonic in types for the environments we study.

Suggested Citation

  • da Costa, Carlos E. & Pereira, Thiago, 2014. "On the efficiency of equal sacrifice income tax schedules," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 399-418.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:70:y:2014:i:c:p:399-418
    DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2014.06.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292114000956
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2014.06.008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gruber, Jon & Saez, Emmanuel, 2002. "The elasticity of taxable income: evidence and implications," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 1-32, April.
    2. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2014. "Optimal Taxation of Top Labor Incomes: A Tale of Three Elasticities," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 230-271, February.
    3. Emmanuel Saez & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2016. "Generalized Social Marginal Welfare Weights for Optimal Tax Theory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(1), pages 24-45, January.
    4. Guesnerie,Roger, 1998. "A Contribution to the Pure Theory of Taxation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521629560.
    5. Matthew Weinzierl, 2011. "The Surprising Power of Age-Dependent Taxes," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(4), pages 1490-1518.
    6. Mitra, Tapan & Ok, Efe A, 1996. "Personal Income Taxation and the Principle of Equal Sacrifice Revisited," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 37(4), pages 925-948, November.
    7. Young, H Peyton, 1990. "Progressive Taxation and Equal Sacrifice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 253-266, March.
    8. Seade, J. K., 1977. "On the shape of optimal tax schedules," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 203-235, April.
    9. Iván Werning, 2007. "Optimal Fiscal Policy with Redistribution," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 925-967.
    10. Emmanuel Farhi, 2013. "Insurance and Taxation over the Life Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(2), pages 596-635.
    11. Ok, Efe A., 1995. "On the principle of equal sacrifice in income taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 453-467, November.
    12. Mikhail Golosov & Narayana Kocherlakota & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2003. "Optimal Indirect and Capital Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(3), pages 569-587.
    13. Michael P. Keane, 2011. "Labor Supply and Taxes: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(4), pages 961-1075, December.
    14. Nezih Guner & Remzi Kaygusuz & Gustavo Ventura, 2014. "Income Taxation of U.S. Households: Facts and Parametric Estimates," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(4), pages 559-581, October.
    15. François Bourguignon & Amedeo Spadaro, 2012. "Tax–benefit revealed social preferences," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 10(1), pages 75-108, March.
    16. Weinzierl, Matthew, 2014. "The promise of positive optimal taxation: normative diversity and a role for equal sacrifice," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 128-142.
    17. Mill, John Stuart, 1874. "Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, edition 2, number mill1874.
    18. Conesa, Juan Carlos & Krueger, Dirk, 2006. "On the optimal progressivity of the income tax code," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 1425-1450, October.
    19. Hausman, Jerry A., 1985. "Taxes and labor supply," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 213-263, Elsevier.
    20. Michael Keane, 2011. "Income Taxation in a Life Cycle Model with Human Capital," Working Papers 201117, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR), Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales.
    21. Musgrave, R.A., 1985. "A brief history of fiscal doctrine," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 1-59, Elsevier.
    22. Diamond, Peter A & Mirrlees, James A, 1971. "Optimal Taxation and Public Production: I--Production Efficiency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 8-27, March.
    23. Juan Carlos Conesa & Sagiri Kitao & Dirk Krueger, 2009. "Taxing Capital? Not a Bad Idea after All!," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 25-48, March.
    24. Berliant, Marcus & Gouveia, Miguel, 1993. "Equal sacrifice and incentive compatible income taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 219-240, June.
    25. Diamond, Peter A, 1998. "Optimal Income Taxation: An Example with a U-Shaped Pattern of Optimal Marginal Tax Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 83-95, March.
    26. Young, H. P., 1988. "Distributive justice in taxation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 321-335, April.
    27. Young, H. P., 1987. "Progressive taxation and the equal sacrifice principle," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 203-214, March.
    28. Emmanuel Saez, 2001. "Using Elasticities to Derive Optimal Income Tax Rates," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(1), pages 205-229.
    29. Gouveia, Miguel & Strauss, Robert P., 1994. "Effective Federal Individual Tax Functions: An Exploratory Empirical Analysis," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 47(2), pages 317-39, June.
    30. Diamond, Peter A & Mirrlees, James A, 1971. "Optimal Taxation and Public Production II: Tax Rules," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(3), pages 261-278, June.
    31. Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell, 2001. "Any Non-welfarist Method of Policy Assessment Violates the Pareto Principle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(2), pages 281-286, April.
    32. Efraim Sadka, 1976. "On Income Distribution, Incentive Effects and Optimal Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 43(2), pages 261-267.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Kristoffer Berg & Paolo Giovanni Piacquadio, 2020. "The Equal-Sacrifice Social Welfare Function with an Application to Optimal Income Taxation," CESifo Working Paper Series 8505, CESifo.
    2. Robin Jessen & Maria Metzing & Davud Rostam-Afschar, 2017. "Optimal Taxation under Different Concepts of Justness," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 953, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Weinzierl, Matthew, 2014. "The promise of positive optimal taxation: normative diversity and a role for equal sacrifice," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 128-142.
    2. Louis Kaplow, 2022. "Optimal Income Taxation," NBER Working Papers 30199, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Lockwood, Benjamin B. & Weinzierl, Matthew, 2016. "Positive and normative judgments implicit in U.S. tax policy, and the costs of unequal growth and recessions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 30-47.
    4. Boadway,Robin & Cuff,Katherine, 2022. "Tax Policy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108949453.
    5. Jonathan Heathcote & Hitoshi Tsujiyama, 2021. "Optimal Income Taxation: Mirrlees Meets Ramsey," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(11), pages 3141-3184.
    6. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2012. "Optimal Labor Income Taxation," NBER Working Papers 18521, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Tymon Słoczyński, 2012. "Zastosowanie zasady równych ofiar do oceny sprawiedliwości taryfy podatku dochodowego od osób fizycznych (PIT) w Polsce," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 10, pages 23-47.
    8. Laurence Ales & Antonio Andres Bellofatto & Jessie Jiaxu Wang, 2017. "Taxing Atlas: Executive Compensation, Firm Size and Their Impact on Optimal Top Income Tax Rates," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 26, pages 62-90, October.
    9. Mitra, Tapan & Ok, Efe A., 1997. "On the Equitability of Progressive Taxation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 316-334, April.
    10. Findeisen, Sebastian & Sachs, Dominik, 2017. "Redistribution and insurance with simple tax instruments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 58-78.
    11. Morten Nyborg Støstad & Frank Cowell, 2021. "Inequality as an Externality: Consequences for Tax Design," PSE Working Papers halshs-03495989, HAL.
    12. Amedeo Spadaro, 2002. "Redistribución e incentivos a la oferta de trabajo: Desarrollos recientes de la teoría de la imposición óptima sobre la renta," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 160(1), pages 147-173, march.
    13. Sachs, Dominik & Findeisen, Sebastian, 2015. "Insurance and Redistribution with Simple Tax Instruments," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113099, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Mikhail Golosov & Maxim Troshkin & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2011. "Optimal Taxation: Merging Micro and Macro Approaches," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 147-174, August.
    15. Stefanie Stantcheva, 2020. "Dynamic Taxation," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 801-831, August.
    16. Sebastian Koehne & Nicola Pavoni & Arpad Abraham, 2011. "Optimal Income Taxation with Asset Accumulation," 2011 Meeting Papers 1161, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Peter J. Lambert & Helen T. Naughton, 2009. "The Equal Absolute Sacrifice Principle Revisited," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 328-349, April.
    18. Marek Kapička, 2015. "Optimal Mirrleesean Taxation in a Ben-Porath Economy," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 219-248, April.
    19. N. Gregory Mankiw & Matthew Weinzierl & Danny Yagan, 2009. "Optimal Taxation in Theory and Practice," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(4), pages 147-174, Fall.
    20. Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2018. "Pareto efficient taxation and expenditures: Pre- and re-distribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 101-119.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Efficiency; Equal sacrifice;

    JEL classification:

    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    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:eee:eecrev:v:70:y:2014:i:c:p:399-418. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eer .

    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.