Does Progressive Taxation Redistribute Income?
by David A. Hartman on 02/12/2002
16 Pages
Progressive taxation was designed to reduce income disparity by disproportionately taxing upper incomes and redistributing the proceeds through the welfare state. However, over the four decades, while the share of income taxes levied on the upper tenth of incomes rose 15 percentage points, the after tax income share of the remainder of incomes declined 13 percentage points. Progressive taxation has failed to reduce the disparity of real incomes.
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