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On the Optimal Taxation of Capital Income

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function <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> after-tax real wage, equation (1.b), no longer applies. It can<br />

be shown that, <strong>the</strong> relevant version <strong>of</strong> (2) is<br />

:<br />

t=0<br />

CAPITAL INCOME TAXATION<br />

; t u c(t)[c t&(1&{ n<br />

t)F n(t)]=u c(0)[[F k(0)(1&{ k<br />

0)+1&$] k 0+b 0]. (7)<br />

Since taxation <strong>of</strong> labor income generates only income effects it is clear<br />

that <strong>the</strong> optimal tax rate is { n<br />

t =1. If this is <strong>the</strong> bound on labor taxes, it can<br />

be shown that <strong>the</strong> result in section 2 holds <strong>the</strong> limiting capital income tax<br />

rate is zero. To highlight <strong>the</strong> consequences <strong>of</strong> less than full taxation <strong>of</strong><br />

pr<strong>of</strong>its we will make two additional assumptions. First, that <strong>the</strong>re is an<br />

upper bound on <strong>the</strong> tax rate on labor income given by { n 0 (this is <strong>the</strong> multiplier corresponding to <strong>the</strong> resource constraint)<br />

it suffices to show that W k*0. Note that<br />

given F kn>0 (from our assumption that F is concave and homogeneous <strong>of</strong><br />

degree one and F kn{0), W k*0. We now show that<br />

*>0.<br />

Proposition 2. Let (c^, x^, k ) be <strong>the</strong> solution to <strong>the</strong> unconstrained planner's<br />

problem<br />

109

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