Introduction to the Symposium on Taxation and the Family

The motivation for this symposium was the view that the problems of taxation of the family are very important, indeed central, for income tax policy, but are relatively neglected in theoretical public economics. We hope that this collection will stimulate interest and further work in this area. In this Introduction, rather than summarizing the collected papers (several of which are already in the nature of survey papers), we provide a historical background to the literature on what we see as the three central themes of family tax policy: the taxation of two-earner couples, the tax treatment of children, and the issues raised by the taxation of bequests. (JEL codes: D13, D64, D78, D82, E6, H21, H23, H24, H31, J12, J13, J16).