Are developments in the theory of taxation improving tax policies around the world? The optimal design of a tax system is a topic that has long fascinated economic theorists and flummoxed economic ...

Over the past several years, most of the public discussion over tax policy has focused on how much the wealthy should pay and what the top marginal tax rate should be. After extensively debating the ...

When it comes to taxes, many people feel the government can never collect enough. But how can governments determine the “ideal” tax rate? Enter the Laffer curve—a theory that suggests there is an ...

Taxation is not just about the technicalities of tax law. The LSE Tax Research Hub is committed to understanding tax through the principles that underlie it. This approach includes studying how taxes ...

Weinzierl, Matthew C. "Book Review of 'From Optimal Tax Theory to Tax Policy' by Robin Boadway." National Tax Journal 66, no. 1 (March 2013): 263–274.

It is one of the standard assumptions of optimal taxation--perhaps one of the standard findings is better--that we don't want to tax capital income. This is on efficiency grounds of course, the same ...

The New York Times has run a couple of pieces over the last couple of days bemoaning the sorry state of America's tax system. The very rich, the ultra-wealthy, apparently pay a lower average tax rate ...

Mankiw, N. Gregory, Matthew C. Weinzierl, and Danny Yagan. "Optimal Taxation in Theory and Practice." Journal of Economic Perspectives 23, no. 4 (Fall 2009): 147–174.