Should capital income be taxed? And if so, how?

Abstract

There are three main approaches to taxing capital income, being the income tax, the expenditure tax - which effectively exempts most capital income - or hybrids such as the rate of return allowance (RRA). This paper considers the theoretical arguments for taxing capital income less than fully, and finds that they need to be qualified. A strong case can be made for at least taxing that component of capital return which is above the risk-free rate (e.g., the bond rate). While the RRA favoured by the Mirrlees Committee does this, it is administratively cumbersome and the author proposes a new approach called the Z-tax which uses cash-flow tax principles to arrive at an end result which can be made similar to the RRA. Show more