Arbeitspapier

Tax Me If You Can! Optimal Nonlinear Income Tax between Competing Governments

We investigate how the optimal nonlinear income tax schedule is modified when taxpayers can evade taxation by emigrating. We consider two symmetric countries with Maximin governments. Workers choose their labor supply along the intensive margin. The skill distribution is continuous, and, for each skill level, the distribution of migration cost is also continuous. We show that optimal marginal tax rates are nonnegative at the symmetric Nash equilibrium when the semi-elasticity of migration is decreasing in the skill level. When the semi-elasticity of migration is increasing in the skill level, either optimal marginal tax rates are positive everywhere or they are positive for the lower part of the skill distribution and then negative. Numerical simulations are calibrated using plausible values of the semi-elasticity of migration for top income earners. We show that the shape of optimal tax schedule varies significantly, depending on the profile of the semi-elasticity of migration over the entire skill distribution - a profile over which we lack empirical evidence.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 4351

Classification
Wirtschaft
Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
Taxation and Subsidies: Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
International Fiscal Issues; International Public Goods
Subject
optimal income tax
income tax competition
migration
labor mobility
Nash-equilibrium tax schedules

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Lehmann, Etienne
Simula, Laurent
Trannoy, Alain
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
(where)
Munich
(when)
2013

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Lehmann, Etienne
  • Simula, Laurent
  • Trannoy, Alain
  • Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)

Time of origin

  • 2013

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