Is exit tax a good idea for the taxman?
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study whether it is a rational choice for a tax authority to impose an exit tax on capitalists.
Design/methodology/approach
The tax authority chooses a lump-sum exit tax to maximize a weighted objective of expected tax revenue and expected tax horizon. The tax revene consists of capital income taxes and exit taxes. Capitalists are motivated by sustainable capital accumulation and hence maximize the terminal capital stock.
Findings
The author finds that the objective function of the tax authority is strictly increasing in the exit tax, which holds for extensions with sales tax, labor income tax or proportional exit tax, and hence equilibrium exit tax is equal to an exogenous upper bound.
Originality/value
To the author’s knowledge, no existing literature investigates this issue theoretically, and hence the current paper represents the first attempt. The author hopes this theoretical analysis can trigger related empirical studies.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author of this paper has not made the research data set openly available. Any enquiries regarding the data set can be directed to the author. Helpful comments from the anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged. Remaining errors are my own.
Citation
Dai, D. (2018), "Is exit tax a good idea for the taxman?", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 45 No. 4, pp. 810-828. https://doi.org/10.1108/JES-04-2017-0094
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited