This paper aims answer the question what is the revenue--maximizing rate of corporate income tax. Before analysis the literature of Laffer curve criticism and conversly literature of Laffer curve applications is summarized. In paper the relationship of tax rates and tax revenues is examined for Czech republic in time period from 1993 to 2009 and for Ireland in time period from 1981 to 2009 by regression analysis. Analysis showed the relationship described by Laffer theory. Revenue--maximizing tax rates reach values of 27,66% for Czech Republic and 25,1% for Ireland. Because the current statutory corporate tax rates are in both countries lower than calculated Laffer points, further reduction in tax rates will result in decline in tax revenues.

租稅為政府最主要籌措財源的方式，如何運用租稅政策籌措財源以舒緩財政窘迫的壓力，是當前政府最急切的關鍵和挑戰。而在若干已開發國家，因經濟體系存有拉佛效果，減稅措施將可刺激經濟活動，使稅基大幅擴大，稅收亦因此而增加。因此，本文即在探討我國綜利用伊布爾模型來探討我國在剔除物價上漲對稅收的影響後，大幅降低所得稅的邊際稅率對較高所得級距者而言，是否會有拉佛效果之產生。而研究結果顯示，減稅並未帶來豐厚的稅收，即未符合拉佛曲線負斜率段落在稅收函數改為傳統線性函數時，應用費格及麥吉之模型來探討生產因素供給彈性、地下經濟規模及過高的稅率對稅收的影響並藉以推導最適稅率。經實證估計我國1989年綜合所得稅的最適平均稅率大約為50

This thesis is concerned with inequality, redistribution and taxation, in particular the taxation of labour income and the distribution of wealth. Most of the analysis is focused on Sweden. The thesis consists of four self-contained essays. Essay 1: “Analyzing tax reforms using the Swedish Labour Income Microsimulation Model”. Labour income taxation is a central policy topic because labour income makes up the majority of national income and most taxes are in the end taxes on labour. In order to quantify how behavioural responses of labour income earners affect tax revenue, the Swedish Labour Income Microsimulation Model (SLIMM) is constructed and used to evaluate tax reforms. Elasticities are calibrated to match midpoints of estimates found in the quasiexperimental literature. The simulations indicate that the earned income tax credit has increased employment by 128,000 and has a degree of self-financing of 21 percent. Almost half of the revenue increase from higher municipal tax rates would disappear due to behavioural responses. Tax cuts for the richest fifth of working Swedes are completely self-financing. Essay 2: “The Laffer curve for high incomes”. An expression for the Laffer curve for high incomes is derived, assuming a constant Pareto parameter and elasticity of taxable income. Microsimulations using Swedish population data show that the simulated curve matches the theoretically derived Laffer curve well, suggesting that the analytical expression is not too much of a simplification. A country-level dataset of top effective marginal tax rates and Pareto parameters is assembled. This is used to draw Laffer curves for 27 OECD countries. Revenue-maximizing tax rates and degrees of self-financing for a small tax cut are also computed. The results indicate that degrees of self-financing range between 28 and 195 percent. Five countries have higher tax rates than the peak of the Laffer curve. Essay 3: “Political preferences for redistribution in Sweden” (with Spencer Bastani). We examine preferences for redistribution inherent in Swedish tax policy 1971–2012 using the inverse optimal tax approach. The income distribution is carefully characterized with the help of administrative register data and we employ behavioral elasticities reflecting the perceived distortionary effects of taxation. The revealed social welfare weights are high for non-workers, small for low-income earners, and hump-shaped around the median. At the top, they are always negative, especially so during the high-tax years of the 1970s and ’80s. The weights on non-workers increased sharply in the 1970s, fell drastically in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and have since then increased. Essay 4: “Wealth inequality in Sweden: What can we learn from capitalized income data?” (with Daniel Waldenström). This paper presents new estimates of wealth inequality in Sweden during 2000–2012, linking wealth register data up to 2007 and individually capitalized wealth based on income and property tax registers for the period thereafter when a repeal of the wealth tax stopped the collection of individual wealth statistics. We find that wealth inequality increased after 2007 and that more unequal bank holdings and housing appear to be important drivers. We also evaluate the performance of the capitalization method by contrasting its estimates and their dispersion with observed stocks in register data up to 2007. The goodness-of-fit varies tremendously across assets and we conclude that although capitalized wealth estimates may well approximate overall inequality levels and trends, they are highly sensitive to assumptions and the quality of the underlying data sources.

The main goal of the thesis is to explore selected economical hypotheses through theoretical conception applying macroeconomics data from the Czech Republic. This thesis includes the following hypotheses: budget deficits solved by increasing taxes, compromise between unemployment and inflation, low impact of budget deficits. To verify these hypotheses, there is a comparison with economic theories such as Laffer curve, which has showed that Laffer peak is at the level of 22 % taxation. Other used theory is the Phillips curve where correlation between inflation and unemployment rate is stronger based on yearly data than on monthly data. Theoretical model IS-LM has confirmed that multiplication effect could have caused the positive economic growth in 2010 and 2011. Even if economical hypothesizes are partially correct, they are not recommended for the government to determine their decisions. There are more efficient long-term solutions that can be used to solve challenges of the recent economic situation.

There are many recent studies which try to find the evidence of the Laffer curve in national economies or aggregated OECD data. In this Master Thesis I focus on testing of the primary linear relation of the corporate income tax rate and the corporate tax base, that I call herein adjusted Laffer curve. The adjusted Laffer curve is then transferred through the simplification into the ordinary Laffer curve. The linear regression analysis is performed on the OECD data of 34 countries across years 2000 to 2014. Firstly, the countries are split by the national tax system criteria, such as tax quota, tax revenue allocation or tax structure of revenues that I consider essential for further analysis. Based on the results of linear regression I can only find Laffer curve in set of countries that aim to collect tax revenues mainly from direct taxes. However, there are also other major findings, such as the fact that negative relation of the corporate income tax rate and the corporate tax base, can be found in countries with the higher tax quota, while not in those with the lower tax quota.

The thesis deals with a conception of the Laffer curve. It shows up economic chain of events of the Laffer curve origin. The conception is upgraqded by administrative costs of tax collection, thesis put into the connection tax rate and tax efficiency through this way. Further, there is checked by statistical software relation between tax yield and tax rate. There is also made quantification of administrative costs of the tax collection.

The analysis of data from the Czech Republic between 1993 and 2013 assesses how VAT rate changes impact VAT revenues of respective national budgets. The core focus of the paper is the application of the Laffer curve on value added tax. Using a regression analysis we analyze how VAT revenue contributions to the budget are impacted by GDP. The results of our econometric model impaly that a 1% GDP increase leads to a 0.987% increase in VAT revenues to the budget. We find, by cleansing the VAT revenue data of inflationary and GDP effects, that the highest income generating VAT rates are 23% standard and 5% reduced. Both rates were, however, in effect as a result of VAT introductions in the Czech Republic, which might lead to a significant bias in our analysis. We present a chart of a time series of VAT revenues adjusted for inflationary and GDP effects which shows that VAT revenues decrease in the period from 1993 to 1998 after which they stabilize at around CZK 40bn until 2013. From that we infer that, over time, VAT payers have learned how to avoid the tax. We also present three hypotheses in our work; we find that an increase in the reduced VAT rate always brings additional revenues to the budget, that standard VAT rate changes impact revenues in the same direction in only 3 out of 5 cases, and that standard VAT rate changes are a leading variable for household consumption, the trend of which is always less volatile as the lagging variable. The above applies for the reduced VAT rate in just one of four cases.

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Diese Dissertation besteht aus drei Aufsätzen, welche die Effekte von Geld- und Fiskalpolitiken für die Makroökonomie untersuchen. Der erste Aufsatz analysiert, wie das Verhalten der Inflation nach z.B. geldpolitischen Veränderungen erklärt werden kann. Mankiw und Reis (2002) propagieren klebrige Information als eine Alternative zu Calvo klebrigen Preisen, um drei konventionelle Sichtweisen über die Inflation zu modellieren. Ich verwende ein DSGE Modell mit klebriger Information und vergleiche es mit Calvo klebrigen Preisen mit dynamischer Inflationsindexierung wie in Christiano et al. (2005). Ich zeige, dass beide Modelle in meinem DSGE Rahmen gleich gut geeignet sind, die konventionellen Sichtweisen zu erklären. Der zweite Aufsatz untersucht, wie sich das Verhalten von Haushalten und Firmen in den USA und EU-15 infolge von Steuerveränderungen anpasst. Mittels eines neoklassischen Wachstumsmodells zeigt sich, dass die USA und EU-15 auf der linken Seite der Lohn- und Kapitalsteuer Laffer Kurve liegen. Die EU-15 befindet sich jedoch viel näher an der rutschigen Steigung als die USA. Eine dynamische Scoring-Analyse zeigt, dass Steuersenkungen in der EU-15 stärker selbstfinanzierend sind als in den USA. Es folgt, dass es in der EU-15 grössere Anreize durch Steuersenkungen als in den USA gibt. Der dritte Aufsatz analysiert, ob die Fiskalpolitik Steuerreformen vor deren Implementierung vorankündigen soll, um die Wohlfahrt zu maximieren. Domeij und Klein (2005) zeigen, dass Vorankündigung einer optimalen Steuerreform mit Wohlfahrtskosten verbunden ist. Ich prüfe diese Behauptung unter zusätzlicher Berücksichtigung von öffentlichen Gütern und Kapital nach. Ich zeige, dass nutzenbringende und produktive Staatsausgaben die Wohlfahrtskosten durch Vorankündigungen höchstwahrscheinlich reduzieren. Es zeigt sich weiter, dass kurzfristige Konfiszierung und/oder Subvention von Kapital und Löhnen nicht wichtig für die Wohlfahrsgewinne einer hinreichend vorangekündigten Steuerreform sind. / This dissertation consists of three essays which investigate the economic implications of monetary and fiscal policies on the macroeconomy. The first essay focuses on the question: how can we explain the behavior of inflation in response to e.g. monetary policy changes? Mankiw and Reis (2002) propose sticky information as an alternative to Calvo sticky prices to model three conventional views about inflation. We use a fully-fledged DSGE model with sticky information and compare it to Calvo sticky prices, allowing also for dynamic inflation indexation as in Christiano et al. (2005). We find that both models do equally well in our DSGE framework in delivering the conventional views. The second essay analyzes the question: how does the behavior of households and firms in the US compared to the EU-15 adjust if fiscal policy changes taxes? Using a calibrated neoclassical growth model we show that the US and the EU-15 are located on the left side of their labor and capital tax Laffer curves, but the EU-15 being much closer to the slippery slopes than the US. A dynamic scoring analysis shows that tax cuts in the EU-15 are much more self-financing than in the US. We conclude that there are higher incentive effects in the EU-15 compared to the US in response to tax cuts. Finally, the third essay focuses on the question: should fiscal policy pre-announce tax reforms before their implementation from a welfare point of view? Domeij and Klein (2005) show that pre-announcement of an optimal tax reform is costly in terms of welfare. We reexamine their claim by taking two additional features of government spending into account: public goods and public capital. We show that valuable and productive government spending is likely to reduce the welfare costs of preannouncement. As a further contribution, we show that short-run confiscation and/or subsidy of capital and labor income is not important for the welfare gains of pre-announced reforms with sufficiently long pre-announcement duration.