Politics and Income Taxes: Progress and Progressivity

Marcus Berliant and Pierre Boyer

No 10041, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper begins with a survey of the literature on the political economy approaches to labor income taxation. We focus on recent progress made by examining in detail the specific properties of nonlinear taxes derived in the context of voting. Next, we present new results on the existence of majority voting equilibrium that unify work in the standard framework. Finally, we discuss how recent theoretical results help us uncover empirical patterns from the last 50 years in the US tax system, namely a sharp decrease in top marginal tax rates, the rise of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and increased progressivity in the middle of the income distribution.

Keywords: non-linear income taxation; tax reform; political economy; optimal taxation; EITC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 D82 H21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe and nep-pol
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Related works:
Journal Article: Politics and income taxes: Progress and progressivity (2024)
Working Paper: Politics and income taxes: progress and progressivity (2024)
Working Paper: Politics and income taxes: progress and progressivity (2023)
Working Paper: Politics and income taxes: progress and progressivity (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10041

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