Time Consistent Taxation by a Government with Redistributive Goals

Abstract

In a dynamic economy whose government is interested in both equity and efficiency, time consistency problems arise even if the government has access to nondistortionary tax instruments. Moral hazard in production leads to a nondegenerate distribution of income, which the government would like to "flatten" ex post. Self-enforcing social agreements can mitigate the tendency toward excessive redistribution. We investigate the nature of the distortions caused by the time consistency problem, and show that in the constrained-optimal equilibrium, usually a linear tax schedule is imposed. This remains true if renegotiation of the social agreement is possible.