Saez och Diamond: höj skatten!

källa: Världsbanken, som tagit från Source KPMG's Individual Income Tax and Social Security Rate Survey 2009 (www.kpmg.com), and PricewaterhouseCoopers's Worldwide Tax Summaries Online (www.pwc.com).

"Via a circuitous Internet chain – Paul Krugman of Princeton University quoting Mark Thoma of the University of Oregon reading the Journal of Economic Perspectives – I got a copy of an article written by Emmanuel Saez, whose office is 50 feet from mine, on the same corridor, and the Nobel laureate economist Peter Diamond. Saez and Diamond argue that the right marginal tax rate for North Atlantic societies to impose on their richest citizens is 70%."

Brad DeLong, "The 70% Solution", Project Syndicate 30 november

artikeln som DeLong refererar till:
Peter Diamond & Emmanuel Saez, "The Case for a Progressive Tax: From Basic Research to Policy Recommendations" (pdf), Journal of Economic Literature höst 2011

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Uppdatering 28 februari 2012
Christina D. Romer och David H. Romer, "The Incentive Effects of Marginal Tax Rates: Evidence from the Interwar Era", NBER Working Paper No. 17860, februari 2012

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Uppdatering 4 mars 2012
PS presidentkandidat Hollande har uttalat sig för att höja den högsta marginalskatten i Frankrike till 75 procent, för dem som tjänar över 1 miljon € per år. FT:s Gideon Rachman kommenterar:

"Even by European standards, a top-rate of tax at this level would make France a real outlier. Currently, Sweden has the highest top-rate of tax in Europe at 56.5%. Germany’s top rate is 47.5% and France is at just 41%. The fact that Britain has a top-rate of 50% – currently significantly higher than France – is a source of considerable embarrassment to George Osborne, the UK chancellor. He, for one, would be delighted if Mr Hollande is elected president of France in May, and makes good on his promise.

Yet, before the Reagan and Thatcher reforms, very high top levels of tax were standard stuff in the West. The US had a top tax rate of 70% in 1980. It is now down to 35%. Meanwhile, in the UK, it wasn’t until 1988 that Nigel Lawson, Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor, cut the top tax-rate from 60% to 40% – a move that literally provoked howls of anger from the Labour backbenches.
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So if Hollande wins and actually enacts his proposal it will be a bold move. Perhaps he will be a trailblazer, shifting the debate on income tax back to the pre-Thatcher era. Or perhaps, France will remain an anomaly – and even more rich French people will move to London or Geneva. Either way, it would be an interesting experiment."

Gideon Rachman, "Hollande and soaking the rich", FT:s The World-blogg 28 februari 2012

FT:s livekrisblogg 29 februari uppger att 75-procentsnivån bara skulle beröra ca 3500 personer och dra in runt €250-300 miljoner.

Uppdatering 10 april 2012
Ett nytt paper av Filip Spagnoli vid den belgiska centralbanken undersöker för- och nackdelar med låga skatter. Abstract:

"Low tax rates can be seen as a desirable policy goal for a variety of reasons. Your views on justice and desert may require a system of taxation that allows people to keep as much as possible of what they earn. Or you may have strong opinions on property rights, self-property, self-reliance and the 'undeserving poor'. In this paper, however, I will examine the merits of another and prima facie more convincing rationale, namely that low levels of taxation - especially low levels of taxation on the income or wealth of the so-called productive segments of society - are beneficial for economic growth. I criticize both the theoretical underpinnings of this view and its factual basis. The paper has three parts: 1) a description of the view; 2) a theoretical criticism; and 3) a criticism based on statistical correlations. I believe this issue is of the utmost importance given the urgency with which many legislators and economists in various countries advocate tax cuts. This advocacy is regrettable because neither the theoretical nor the empirical grounds for it are sound. It may even be the case that low tax rates have unwanted harmful consequences instead of the assumed beneficial ones."

Spagnoli, "There’s No There There: Low Tax Rates and Economic Growth", 27 mars 2012

Uppdatering 27 april
The Economist konstaterar att trenden sedan 1980 med fallande högsta marginalskatter kan vara på gång att vändas.

The Economist Daily Chart-bloggen, "Tax returns", 26 april

Och Chye-Ching Huang har gjort en översikt över effekter av höga skatter på arbetsutbud, sparande, investeringar m m.
Huang, "Recent Studies Find Raising Taxes on High-Income Households Would Not Harm the Economy" (pdf), Center on Budget and Public Policy Priorities, 24 april