[ Journa © 2013 market. We study this problem in the context of a directed search model of the labor market populated by homogeneous workers and heterogeneous firms. The optimal redistribution can be attained using a positive unemployment benefit and an increasing and regressive labor income tax. The positive unemployment benefit serves the purpose of lowering the search risk faced by workers. ...

This paper estimates that the US could attain large welfare gains by implementing an optimal Ramsey tax policy that taxes consumption and income. It is also found that the welfare implications associated with taxing consumption are quantitatively more important than those associated with dynamically taxing income. Indeed, replacing income taxes with a constant consumption tax leads to a welfare...

Everyone knows that starting a business requires cash, and growing a business requires even more. But few people understand that a profitable company that tries to grow too fast can run out of cash even if its products are great successes. So a big challenge for managers of any growing concern is to strike the proper balance between consuming cash and generating it. Authors Neil Churchill and J...

This paper presents some methods to redistribute the gains (or losses) of a tax reform and a procedure to identify the value judgements according to the tax reform outcome. They are useful to analyse the original proposal of personal income tax (IRPEF) reform presented in Italy by the current Executive on 21 December 2001. The principal outcome will show that ‘the redistribution continues to go...

Despite a recent flurry of empirical research on the effects of taxes on small business activity, state-level taxes faced by entrepreneurs have been overlooked by most of the existing literature. Using a 50-state panel of tax policy information spanning the years 1989 through 2002, our analysis reveals that state tax policies generally do not appear to have quantitatively important effects on e...

Tax policy encourages charitable contributions during an individual’s life through both the personal income tax and the estate tax. The effect of the income tax on contributions is well known. Because annual charitable contributions reduce the size of an estate, and hence the likely estate tax burden, the estate tax should also affect contributions. Recently, Auten and Joulfaian (1996) studied ...

This paper considers an optimal income tax cum higher education policy. It shows that in the presence of an optimal income tax system higher education should be taxed rather than subsidized. Furthermore, income taxes should become less progressive when an optimal higher education policy is introduced. JEL Classification: H21, I22. Berthold U. Wigger Department of Economics University of Mannhei...

Based on a representative data set of more than 36,000 original tax report extracts, we develop a microsimulation model that calculates the fiscal impact of changes in the area of tax deductible work-related expenses, in particular expenses for travelling from private home to the place of work, in Germany. The new model allows a more accurate estimation of the fiscal impact of changes in the Ge...

In many OECD countries, statutory corporate tax rates are lower than personal income tax rates. The present paper argues that this tax rate differentiation is an optimal tax policy if there are problems of asymmetric information between investors and firms in the capital market. The reduction of the corporate tax rate below the personal tax rate encourages equity financing and thus mitigates th...