Contributions

  • Harvard Business School - Contributor

Publication

2009 - Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts

Language

English

Word Count

3,750 words, Guess

Page Count

15 pages

Identifiers

Description

Should the income tax include a credit for short taxpayers and a surcharge for tall ones? The standard Utilitarian framework for tax analysis answers this question in the affirmative. Moreover, a plausible parameterization using data on height and wages implies a substantial height tax: a tall person earning $50,000 should pay $4,500 more in tax than a short person. One interpretation is that personal attributes correlated with wages should be considered more widely for determining taxes. Alternatively, if policies such as a height tax are rejected, then the standard Utilitarian framework must fail to capture intuitive notions of distributive justice.

Subjects

Series Statement

  • Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 09-139

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