Tax Reforms and Top Incomes

Enrico Rubolino and Daniel Waldenström at VoxEU:

Tax reforms and top incomes: The link between tax progressivity and the income distribution is the subject of intense debate. This column presents new evidence from tax reforms during the 1980s and 1990s to examine how reduced progressivity affects top income shares. Reduced progressivity boosted top incomes, particularly for those in the top 0.1% of earners. Income tax changes are a plausible candidate for explaining the recent surge in income inequality. …

Tax reforms did not increase the size of the cake

Tax progressivity was reduced in the 1980s on the argument that there would be a positive impact on economic activity and efficiency (Auerbach and Slemrod 1997, Gale and Samswick 2014). Therefore it could be that the estimated boost in top shares reflects new resources created in top groups, rather than a redistribution of incomes away from the bottom and middle. We evaluate this hypothesis…, this analysis does not show large real income responses to reductions in progressivity. …

Taxation and inequality

Our findings suggest that tax progressivity changes influence pre-tax income inequality. Focusing on large, progressivity-reducing tax reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, we show that they had a positive, increasing effect on top income shares in all the countries we studied. …