Income Tax Reform

This manuscript contains one proposal for comprehensive income taxation based on two foundations. First, the proposal reflects our experience working on tax issues in emerging economies. Tax policy in emerging economies must be made within the severe constraints of the economy, including a less experienced and still evolving tax administration. This experience has taught us that the dynamic interaction between policy and administration is essential for successful reform. In addition, budget constraints can be severe in these countries, so policy, at least as we have practiced it, needs to be collection driven. We believe that more developed economies might learn from the experience of emerging economies. Second, our perspective is that all taxes are borne by individuals and, other things equal, reduce individual real income (understood as an expanded notion of Haig-Simons income developed in the text). In sum, our proposal is based on microeconomic methodology translated into an empirical measure. An additional element of the proposal is the explicit incorporation of risk sharing in tax design. There is nothing new in the proposal with respect to any specific element. What we believe is novel is how the elements are combined with application to provide an income tax that can be administered effectively in a cost-effective way. This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International] licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.