Neutral Taxation of Shareholder Income: A Norwegian Tax Reform Proposal

A Norwegian tax reform committee recently proposed a personal tax on the realized income from shares after deduction for an imputed risk-free rate of return. This paper describes the design of the proposed shareholder income tax and shows that it will be approximately neutral in several important dimensions, provided that full loss offsets are granted. Thus the tax allows some non-distortionary double taxation of corporate equity income. With an appropriate choice of tax rates, it also solves the problem of income shifting under a dual income tax. The final part of the paper clarifies the differences between the shareholder income tax and previous proposals for neutral capital income taxation.tax neutrality; shareholder income tax; corporate-personal tax integration

The Theory of Optimal Taxation: New Developments and Policy Relevance

The theory of optimal taxation has often been criticized for being of little practical policy relevance, due to a lack of robust theoretical results. This paper argues that recent advances in optimal tax theory has made that theory easier to apply and may help to explain some current trends in international tax policy. Covering the taxation of labour income and capital income as well as indirect taxation, the paper also illustrates how some of the key results in optimal tax theory may be derived in a simple, heuristic manner.optimal taxation; uniform taxation; tax neutrality

The Theory of Optimal Taxation: What is the Policy Relevance?

The paper discusses the implications of optimal tax theory for the debates on uniform commodity taxation and neutral capital income taxation. While strong administrative and political economy arguments in favor of uniform and neutral taxation remain, recent advances in optimal tax theory suggest that the information needed to implement the differentiated taxation prescribed by optimal tax theory may be easier to obtain than previously believed. The paper also points to the strong similarity between optimal commodity tax rules and the rules for optimal source-based capital income taxation.optimal taxation; uniform taxation; tax neutrality

Simple Utility Functions with Giffen Demand

We present some simple utility functions whose Marshallian demand functions possess the Giffen property: at some price-wealth pairs, the demand for a good marginally increases in response to an increase in its own price. The utility functions satisfy standard preference properties throughout the usual consumption set of nonnegative bundles: continuity, monotonicity, and convexity.preferences; Giffen good

Dual Income Taxation: Why and how?

The dual income tax combines a progressive tax schedule for labour income with a low flat tax rate on capital income and corporate income. This paper restates the case for the dual income tax and discusses alternative methods of taxing business income under such a tax system, paying special attention to the taxation of income from closely held corporations. It is argued that the imputed normal return to shares in unlisted companies should be taxed as capital income, while above-normal returns should be subject to labour income tax. The paper demonstrates that such a tax scheme can be designed to be neutral towards the firm’s investment and financing decisions and towards the decisions of shareholders to realize their shares.dual income tax, tax neutrality, taxation of business income, shareholder income tax

Neutral Taxation of Shareholder Income: A Norwegian Tax Reform Proposal

A Norwegian tax reform committee recently proposed a personal tax on the realized income from shares after deduction for an imputed risk-free rate of return. This paper describes the design of the proposed shareholder income tax and shows that it will be approximately neutral in several important dimensions, provided that full loss o.sets are granted. Thus the tax allows some non-distortionary double taxation of corporate equity income. With an appropriate choice of tax rates, it also solves the problem of income shifting under a dual income tax. The final part of the paper clarifies the differences between the shareholder income tax and previous proposals for neutral capital income taxation.tax neutrality, shareholder income tax, corporate-personal tax integration

Can Capital Income Taxes Survive? And Should They?

The paper surveys some main results in the theory of capital income taxation in the open economy; reviews recent trends in international taxation, and discusses alternative blueprints for fundamental capital income tax reform from the perspective of an open economy faced with growing mobility of capital income tax bases.

International Tax Coordination: Regionalism Versus Globalism

Tax competition for mobile capital can undermine the attempts of governments to redistribute income from rich to poor. I study whether international tax coordination can alleviate this problem, using a general equilibrium model synthesizing recent contributions to the tax competition literature. The model highlights the crucial distinction between global tax coordination and regional coordination. With high capital mobility between the tax union and the rest of the world, the welfare gain from regional capital income tax coordination is only a small fraction of the gain from global coordination, even if the tax union is large relative to the world economy.Tax competition, tax coordination, capital income taxation

Dual Income Taxes: A Nordic Tax System

This paper discusses the principles and practices of dual income taxation in the Nordic countries. The first part of the paper explains the rationale and the historical background for the introduction of the dual income tax and describes the current Nordic tax practices. The second part of the paper focuses on the problems of taxing income from small businesses and the issue of corporate-personal tax integration under the dual income tax, considering alternative ways of dealing with these challenges. In the third and final part of the paper, I briefly discuss whether introducing a dual income tax could be relevant for New Zealand.