Capital Taxation May Survive in Open Economies

Why do capital taxes still exist in an integrated world economy? When capital is perfectly mobile across countries and labour is fixed, a source-based tax on capital both reduces and redistributes world income. In a simple general equilibrium model we show that under plausible circumstances there always exists a country that bene¡¥ts from introducing such a tax. Countries that are richer in terms of human rather than ¡¥nancial capital tend to benefit from capital taxation.International capital taxation, Redistribution, Incidence