I’ve explained that it is silly for Obama and others to think it is easy to squeeze more money from rich taxpayers, and I’ve also provided evidence from the 1980s to show that upper-income people have considerable ability to respond to changes in tax rates by shifting the timing, level, and composition of their income.
But I haven’t specifically responded to some recent studies which make rather outlandish claims that the revenue-maximizing tax rate is 70 percent or above.
Fortunately, my Cato colleague Alan Reynolds has stepped forward. His column in today’s Wall Street Journal decimates these assertions.
President Obama and others are demanding that we raise taxes on the “rich,” and two recent academic papers that have gotten a lot of attention claim to show that there will be no ill effects if we do. The first paper, by Peter Diamond of MIT and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, appeared in the Journal of Economic Perspectives last August. The second, by Mr. Saez, along with Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Stefanie Stantcheva of MIT, was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research three months later. Both suggested that federal tax revenues would not decline even if the rate on the top 1% of earners were raised to 73%-83%.
How do they arrive at such high numbers? Alan explains.
The authors arrive at their conclusion through an unusual calculation of the “elasticity” (responsiveness) of taxable income to changes in marginal tax rates. According to a formula devised by Mr. Saez, if the elasticity is 1.0, the revenue-maximizing top tax rate would be 40% including state and Medicare taxes. That means the elasticity of taxable income (ETI) would have to be an unbelievably low 0.2 to 0.25 if the revenue-maximizing top tax rates were 73%-83% for the top 1%. The authors of both papers reach this conclusion with creative, if wholly unpersuasive, statistical arguments.
Is this assumption warranted? Hardly. Alan elaborates, making the same points I’ve made about rich people being different than the rest of us.
But the ETI for all taxpayers is going to be lower than for higher-income earners, simply because people with modest incomes and modest taxes are not willing or able to vary their income much in response to small tax changes. So the real question is the ETI of the top 1%. Harvard’s Raj Chetty observed in 2009 that “The empirical literature on the taxable income elasticity has generally found that elasticities are large (0.5 to 1.5) for individuals in the top percentile of the income distribution.” In that same year, Treasury Department economist Bradley Heim estimated that the ETI is 1.2 for incomes above $500,000 (the top 1% today starts around $350,000).
Alan cites other studies as well, all of which show that Saez, Piketty, Diamond, and Stantcheva, are well outside the mainstream.
For all intents and purposes, they cherry-picked data and made unrealistic assumptions in order to justify class-warfare tax policies.
That’s why you’re much better off looking at this research from economists at the University of Chicago and the Federal Reserve. Heck, even the IMF is acknowledging that it’s self-defeating to raise tax rates in a nation like Greece – and top tax rates there are less than 50 percent.
P.S. Lest I forget, it’s also worth mentioning that it’s a very bad idea to be at the revenue-maximizing spot on the Laffer Curve. The economic damage, per dollar raised, is enormous. And that’s true whether the revenue-maximizing rate is 20 percent or 70 percent.
[…] Here’s a table from the study showing how the optimum tax rate is very low if the goal is to help workers and society rather than politicians. […]
[…] Here’s a table from the study showing how the optimum tax rate is very low if the goal is to help workers and society rather than politicians. […]
[…] other words, it’s more damaging to increase top tax […]
[…] other words, it’s more damaging to increase top tax […]
[…] Let’s not forget that Piketty’s core argument for class warfare has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked. Indeed, only 3 percent of economists agree with his […]
[…] Let’s not forget that Piketty’s core argument for class warfare has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked. Indeed, only 3 percent of economists agree with his […]
[…] which is very bizarre, but at least his approach is much more honest than other statists who want us to believe that very high tax rates generate more […]
[…] which is very bizarre, but at least his approach is much more honest than other statists who want us to believe that very high tax rates generate more […]
[…] admitting that high tax rates won’t generate revenue. Which means he’s more honest than some of his fellow statists who want us to believe confiscatory tax rates will produce more […]
[…] more rational leftists admit that the Laffer Curve is real. They may argue that the revenue-maximizing rate is up around 70 percent, which is grossly inconsistent with the […]
[…] the point of this blog post is to show that Obama, Krugman, and the rest of the class-warfare crowd are extremely misguided when they urge confiscatory tax rates on the […]
[…] on the left try to denigrate the “Laffer Curve,” but it’s worth noting that even left-wing economists now admit that you don’t maximize revenue with a 100 percent tax […]
[…] But if you ask five economists to identify the revenue-maximizing point, you’ll probably get nine answers. […]
[…] is a Laffer Curve. They may argue that the “revenue-maximizing rate” is very high, with some claiming the government can impose tax rates of more than 70 percent and still collect addition…. But they all recognize that there’s a point where revenue-feedback effects are so strong […]
[…] labor income (economist jargon for how sensitive labor income is to changes in tax rates) is much lower than Alan Reynolds reported in his recent Wall Street Journal […]
[…] Alan Reynolds Dismantles the Silly Claim that Top Tax Rates Should be 70 Percent (or Higher!) […]
[…] labor income (economist jargon for how sensitive labor income is to changes in tax rates) is much lower than Alan Reynolds reported in his recent Wall Street Journal […]
It is thuggish and immoral to find an inelastic relationship in price vs supply, then impose as big a tax as possible on that item. The common example is gasoline taxes.
The idea behind slavery was to make it impossible to avoid the demands of the slaveowners. In more academic terms, the response of the slaves to high demands and taxes was made very inelastic, so the slaves had to submit.
That is just what Peter Diamond, Emmanuel Saez, and Thomas Piketty rely on (mistakenly) in recommending high taxes on “the rich”. It would be truly wonderful, and supremely immoral for the goverment to find large amounts of money there for the taking, because the ability to avoid the tax was “inelastic”.
Economists provide “inelastic” as an acceptable term for “easily stolen”, to a government which wants to loot rather than protect.
Reblogged this on Talon's Point.
[…] Alan Reynolds Dismantles the Silly Claim that Top Tax Rates Should be 70 Percent (or Higher!) […]
I understand you get to wake up in Monaco and other glamorous places, but at some point don’t you just get fed up and want to say, “Listen up people, when the government wants too much of the fruit of other’s labors they get much less.” There we’re done.