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When a Price is Enough: Implementation in Optimal Tax Design

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Abstract

This paper studies the design of tax systems that implement a planner's secondbest allocation in a market economy. An example shows that the widely used Mirrleesian (1976) tax system cannot implement all incentive-compatible allocations. Hammond's (1979) "principle of taxation" proves that any incentive-compatible allocation can be implemented through at least one tax system. However, this tax system is often undesirable since it severely restricts the choice space of agents in the economy. In this paper we derive necessary and sufficient conditions to verify whether a given tax system can implement a given incentive-compatible allocation. We show that when an incentive-compatible allocation is on the Pareto frontier, and/or surjective onto the choice space, a tax system that equates the marginal tax rates to the optimal wedges can implement the second best, without restricting the choice space of the agents. It follows that the Mirrleesian tax system can successfully implement the second best in the identified classes. Since the secondbest allocation of welfarist planners is always on the Pareto frontier, our results (ex post) validate most tax systems proposed in the literature. Outside of the identified classes, the planner may need to restrict the choice space of agents to implement its second best in the market. This sheds new light on rules, quotas and prohibitions used in real-world tax and benefit systems.

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  • Renes, Sander & Zoutman, Floris T., 2014. "When a Price is Enough: Implementation in Optimal Tax Design," Discussion Papers 2014/32, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2014_032
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/11250/223702
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    Cited by:

    1. Aart Gerritsen & Bas Jacobs & Alexandra Victoria Rusu & Kevin Spiritus, 2020. "Optimal Taxation of Capital Income with Heterogeneous Rates of Return," CESifo Working Paper Series 8395, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Optimal non-linear taxation; redistribution; tax system; market implementation; price mechanism; private information;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H22 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Incidence
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies

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