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Published April 1985 | public
Journal Article

Taxation of income from capital: A theoretical reappraisal

Strnad, Jeff

Abstract

This article shows that the traditional mapping between tax bases and tax treatments for investment and borrowing transactions is deeply flawed. In a non-general-equilibrium setting where the effect of taxes on pre-tax prices is not included in the analysis, I show that the cash flow income tax and not the traditional income tax implements the Haig-Simons ideal. Furthermore, in the same setting the cash flow income tax is not equivalent to yield exemption.

Additional Information

© 1985 Stanford Law Review. I would like to thank Mike Graetz and Bob Hahn for their helpful comments on this article and Joshua Stein for his able research assistance. An earlier version of this article was presented 1985 annual meeting of the Public Choice Society and at workshops at New York University Law School and the University of Southern California Law Center. I am grateful to participants for their comments. Several of my colleagues made helpful and extensive suggestions outside of the workshop context: Joe Bankman, Dick Craswell, Norman Lane, Alan Schwartz, Chris Stone, and Jerry Wiley. Finally, I am indebted to Jeff Gordon, Mark Kelman, Bill Klein, Roberta Romano, Susan Rose-Ackerman, and Jim Snyder for their suggestions on the draft immediately preceding publication. All errors are my own. Work on this article received substantial financial support from the U.S.C. Law Center Summer Research Fund for 1983 and 1984. Formerly SSWP 526.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023