Recent Advances in Optimal Income Taxation

This paper reviews recent contributions to the theory of optimal taxation, particularly those that are policy-relevant. These include refinements of the Mirrlees optimal income tax model, optimal redistribution when workers make labour decisions along the extensive margin, generalizations of the Atkinson-Stiglitz and Deaton Theorems on uniform commodity taxation, the implications of involuntary unemployment for redistribution and unemployment insurance, dynamic optimal taxation and the taxation of capital income, non-tax instruments for redistribution, and problems arising if preferences are heterogeneous.