Politics and income taxes: Progress and progressivity

Abstract

This paper begins with a survey of the literature on the political economy approaches to labor income taxation. We focus on recent progress made by examining in detail the specific properties of nonlinear taxes derived in the context of voting. Next, we present new results on the existence of a majority voting equilibrium that unifies work in the standard framework. Finally, we discuss how recent theoretical results help us uncover empirical patterns from the last 50 years in the US tax system, namely, a sharp decrease in top marginal tax rates, the rise of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and increased progressivity in the middle of the income distribution.