Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/58334 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 3820
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
In this paper we extend the zero tax at the top result obtained in the closed economy case with bounded skill distributions for the case of unbounded skill distributions in the presence of international labor mobility and tax competition. We show that in the equilibrium for the tax competition game the optimal marginal income tax rate converges to zero as the income level tends to infinity. We further show in simulations that the zero marginal tax result is not a local property: over a large range at the higher end of the income distribution, the optimal tax is approximately given by a lump-sum tax set at its Laffer rate. We further show that the range in which the optimal marginal tax is approximately set to zero is widening as migration costs decrease.
Subjects: 
tax competition
migration
zero marginal tax at the top
JEL: 
D60
H20
H50
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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