Taxation and Poverty

Christopher Chambers and Juan Moreno-Ternero

No 15.05, Working Papers from Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics

Abstract: We explore the implications of four natural axioms in taxation: continuity (small changes in the data of a taxation problem should not lead to large changes in the tax allocation), equal treatment of equals (agents with the same pre-tax incomes pay equal taxes), consistency (the way in which a group allocates a tax burden is immune to secessions of taxpayers) and composition down (an increase in the tax burden is handled according to agents' current post-tax incomes). The combination of the four axioms characterizes a large family of rules, which we call generalized equal-sacrifice rules, encompassing the so-called equal-sacrifice rules (such as the flat tax), as well as constrained equal-sacrifice rules (such as the head tax), and exogenous poverty-line rules (such as the leveling tax, and some of its possible compromises with the previous ones).

Keywords: taxation; poverty; equal sacrifice; consistency; composition. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2015-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe and nep-pub
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Taxation and poverty (2017)
Working Paper: Taxation and poverty (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pab:wpaper:15.05

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