New Research Challenges Taxing Capital in the Long Run
Capital should be taxed in the long run, contrary to the Chamley-Judd result. The tax on capital is positive and significant when the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is below one. For higher elasticities, the tax may decrease slowly over centuries. In some cases, the tax rate may reach an upper bound indefinitely. When preferences are non-additive across time, a zero-capital-tax limit leads to zero private wealth or zero labor taxes. Rising consumption taxes do not justify avoiding capital taxation.