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Income Creation and/or Income Shifting? The Intensive vs. the Extensive Shifting Margins

Author

Listed:
  • Hakan Selin

    (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy)

  • Laurent Simula

    (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

The optimal tax literature has modelled income shifting as a decision along the intensive margin. However, income shifting involves significant fixed costs, which give rise to an important extensive margin. In this article, we show that the distinction between the intensive and extensive margins has crucial policy implications. We consider a population of agents differing in terms of productivities, labor supply elasticities and costs of income shifting. In the extensive margin model the distinction between income creation and income shifting breaks down and the social planner should not in general combat shifting. In particular, numerical simulations of a linear tax model suggest that the social planner should allow for income shifting if elasticities are heterogeneous in the population. We demonstrate that the qualitative conclusions drawn from the simple linear tax model carry over to a model with two fully non-linear tax schedules.
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Suggested Citation

  • Hakan Selin & Laurent Simula, 2017. "Income Creation and/or Income Shifting? The Intensive vs. the Extensive Shifting Margins," Post-Print halshs-01661934, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01661934
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    Cited by:

    1. Bastani, Spencer & Waldenström, Daniel, 2018. "How Should Capital Be Taxed? Theory and Evidence from Sweden," IZA Discussion Papers 11475, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Escobar, Sebastian & Ohlsson, Henry & Selin, Håkan, 2019. "Taxes, frictions and asset shifting: when Swedes disinherited themselves," Working Paper Series 2019:6, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    3. Spencer Bastani & Daniel Waldenström, 2018. "How should capital be taxed? The Swedish experience," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02878153, HAL.
    4. Johannes Hermle & Andreas Peichl, 2018. "Jointly Optimal Taxes for Different Types of Income," CESifo Working Paper Series 7248, CESifo.
    5. Kotakorpi Kaisa & Matikka Tuomas, 2017. "Revenue-maximizing top earned income tax rate in the presence of income-shifting," Nordic Tax Journal, Sciendo, vol. 2017(1), pages 100-107, January.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies

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