Taxation of Capital in a Globalized Setting

Taxation and Capital Spending

Optimal Capital Income Taxation∗

In an economy with identical infinitely-lived households that obtain utility from leisure as well as consumption, Chamley (1986) and Judd (1985) have shown that the optimal tax system to pay for an exogenous stream of government purchases involves a zero tax rate on capital in the long run, with tax revenue collected by a distortionary tax on labor income. Extending the results of Hall and Jorg...

Constrained Efficient Taxation of Capital

I show in this paper that in an overlapping generations economy with production à la Diamond (1965) in which the agents can only save in terms of physical capital, the laissez-faire competitive equilibrium steady state is not only typically inefficient among all feasible steady states the economy may start from, but it is even ”constrained inefficient”, that is to say, dominated by other steady...

Housing Taxation and Capital Accumulation

This paper studies the impact of the preferential tax treatment of housing capital in a model economy that includes the main housing tax provisions currently in place in the U.S. and a minimum downpayment requirement upon purchasing non-divisible houses. Distortions arise because the tax code makes the return on housing capital larger than that on business capital. The wedge between the two rat...

Capital Taxation under Political Constraints

This paper studies optimal dynamic tax policy under the threat of political reform. A policy will be reformed ex post if a large enough political coalition supports reform; thus, sustainable policies are those that will continue to attract enough political support in the future. We find that optimal marginal capital taxes are either progressive or U-shaped, so that savings are subsidized for th...