A Regional Approach to Income Tax Reform

Abstract

Is it better to have a national income tax or a set of income taxes, different in the different regions? In this article, the authors conduct marginal analysis to determine dominance conditions on the configuration of income distributions in the regions under which small and related new regional taxes are superior to an across-the-board alternative without regard to domicile. Three cases, of lump-sum, proportional, and progressive taxes, are considered. An illustrative application to Spain confirms that the dominance tests can be successful and yields findings that may be of interest in their own right.