Optimal taxation with human capital

Abstract

This dissertation is a contribution to the theoretical foundation of optimal tax codes in models with human capital formation. From the economic point of view, a tax system should generate the government's required revenue with as little economic distortion as possible. In the literature this tax problem is referred to as ""Ramsey problem"" following the work of Ramsey (1927) who was the first considering the government's problem of choosing an optimal tax structure by taking into account the equilibrium reactions by the consumer and firms. This dissertation extends the literature on optimal taxation in models with human capital accumulation by introducing some new results concerning optimal taxation of wage income along balanced growth paths and gives some insight into the existence of balanced growth paths in the absence of government bonds. A surprising characterization of optimal taxation out of steady state is given for a fairly standard two-sector growth model with human capital which is an important innovation due to the fact that taxation literature on human capital almost exclusively focuses on steady state results. In focus of this dissertation are also some applications of our model as comprehensive income taxation which is the leading principle underlying most real world income tax systems. A partial theoretical foundation of this system is provided in the framework of dynamic Ramsey taxation literature and it is shown which complications could arise in practice. As an additional contribution to the literature this dissertation characterizes zero tax results geometrically as a condition on indifference curves and the implementability constraint. This characterization in terms of the primal approach is new and represents from a theoretical point of view the common core of optimal taxation. It provides a unified framework for a study of the phenomena in static and dynamic Ramsey problems and also allows to study deviations from zero tax results in more complicated frameworks. I use this new characterization to study optimal taxation in a model of human capital accumulation without commitment.