We derive a general optimal income tax formula when individuals respond along both the intensive and extensive margins and when income effects can prevail. Individuals are heterogeneous across two dimensions: their skill and their disutility of participation. Preferences over consumption and work effort can differ with respect to the level of skill, with only the Spence-Mirrlees condition being imposed. Employing a new tax perturbation approach that integrates the nonlinearity of the tax function into the behavioral elasticities, we derive a fairly mild condition for optimal marginal tax rates to be nonnegative everywhere. Numerical simulations using U.S. data confirm the mildness of our conditions. The extensive margin strongly reduces the level of optimal marginal tax rates Résumé Nous déterminons une formule générale de taxation optimale pour le cas où les individus ont des réponses intensives et extensives de leur offre de travail et où des effets revenus peuvent survenir. Les individus diffèrent selon deux caractéristiques : leur productivité et leur désutilité à participer. Des individus de productivité différents peuvent avoir une fonction d'utilité différente tant que la condition de Spence-Mirrlees reste vérifiée. En utilisant une nouvelle méthode de perturbation de la fonction de taxe qui intègre dans la définition des élasticités comportementales les non-linéarités de la fonction de taxe, nous obtenons une condition suffisante assez peu restrictive qui garantit que les taux marginaux optimaux sont partout positifs ou nuls. Nos simulations numériques basées sur des données américaines confirment le caractère plausible de notre condition suffisante. Elles montrent également que l'introduction d'une marge extensive réduit singulièrement le niveau des taux marginaux optimaux.
We investigate how potential tax-driven migrations modify the Mirrlees income tax schedule when two countries play Nash. The social objective is the maximin and preferences are quasi-linear in consumption. Individuals differ both in skills and migration costs, which are continuously distributed. We derive the optimal marginal income tax rates at the equilibrium, extending the Diamond-Saez formula. We show that the level and the slope of the semi-elasticity of migration (on which we lack empirical evidence) are crucial to derive the shape of optimal marginal income tax.
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