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Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Taxation and the superrich
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Florian Scheuer
  • Joel Slemrod
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Series Name Working paper series / Department of Economics
Number 337
ISSN 1664-705X
Number of Pages 33
Date 2019
Abstract Text This paper addresses the modern optimal tax progressivity literature, which clarifies the key role of the behavioral response to taxation and accounts for the incomes of the superrich being qualitatively different than others. Some may be “superstars,” for whom small differences in talent are magnified into much larger earnings differences, while others may work in winner-take-all markets, such that their effort to climb the ladder of success reduces the returns to others. We stress that pivotal tax-rate elasticities are not structural parameters, and will be smaller the broader and less plastic is the tax base and the more effective is the enforcement of tax evasion. For this reason, normative analysis of tax rates should be accompanied by attention to the tax base, with a special focus on capital gains, which comprise a large fraction of the taxable income of the superrich.
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Keywords Superrich, tax systems, superstars, winner-take-all markets, plasticity of taxable income, wealth taxes, Steuersystem, Reichtum, Elastizität , Steuerprogression, Steuerflucht
Additional Information Also published as NBER Working Paper No. 26207 (see related URLs).