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IFS Working Papers
May 2009 W09/12
Article
Negative marginal tax rates and heterogeneity
Type: IFS Working Papers
Authors: Philippe Choné and Guy Laroque
ISSN: 1742-0415
JEL classification: H21, H31
Keywords: Optimal taxation, heterogeneity, welfare.

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Heterogeneity is likely to be an important determinant of the shape of optimal tax schemes. This article addresses the issue in a model à la Mirrlees with a continuum of agents. The agents differ in their productivities and opportunity costs of work, but their labor supplies depend only on a unidimensional combination of their two characteristics. Conditions are given under which the standard result that marginal tax rates are everywhere non-negative holds. This is in particular the case when work opportunity costs are distributed independently of productivities. But one can also get negative marginal tax rates: economies where negative tax rates are optimal at the bottom of the income distribution are studied, and a numerical illustration is given, based on UK data.

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