The measurement of global tax progressivity has been extensively debated over
the
last decade. We find that the debate stems from a failure to fully recognize
the role of the average tax burden. We demonstrate that, once the effect of the
average tax burden is controlled for, the two major approaches to global
progressivity measurement, which have been long thought to be fundamentally
different, must rank tax systems the same way. We show that valid welfare
inferences can be drawn from global progressivity comparisons only under
these same conditions.
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