Joint taxation of married couples represents a puzzle for welfare economics. We investigate whether political economy forces can explain its persistence. We develop sufficient statistics to determine whether a reform towards individual taxation would …
We develop a theory of tax reforms for a setting with multi-dimensional heterogeneity amongst taxpayers and multiple economic decisions that are all subject to fixed and variable costs. The theorems in this paper provide a complete characterization …
This paper studies the tax treatment of couples. We develop two different approaches. One is tailored to the analysis of tax systems that stick to the principle that the tax base for couples is the sum of their incomes. The other is tailored to the …