COWLES FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS
AT YALE UNIVERSITY

Box 208281
New Haven, CT 06520-8281

COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 599

"The Optimal Progressive Income Tax — The Existence and the Limit Tax Rates"

Mamoru Kaneko

August 1981

The purpose of this paper is to consider the problem of optimal income taxation in the domain of progressive (convex) income tax function. This paper proves the existence of an optimal tax function and that the optimal marginal and average tax rates tend asymptotically to 100 percent as income level becomes arbitrarily high.

See CFP 558