16 - The Mirrlees Review and Optimal Labor Income Tax and Transfer Programs

Summary

The Mirrlees Review is an impressive endeavor, which sets the agenda and lays the ground for research and studies on taxation and transfers for the next half century, as the Meade (1978) report did for the past 40 years. It has produced two large volumes, Mirrlees et al. (2010) and Mirrlees et al. (2011), respectively, 1,347 and 525 pages long, not counting the online appendices.

The first volume consists of a set of 13 specially commissioned studies that draw on the latest thinking in each area. The authors of each chapter assess a different dimension of tax design. These are supplemented by expert commentaries to provide a comprehensive range of views and ideas.

The second volume, written by the Review's editorial team, presents a coherent tax reform for the United Kingdom based on the available economic knowledge. It first describes the characteristics that a good tax system should exhibit in an open, developed economy. It then judges how the current UK tax system fares with respect to these ideals and recommends how it might realistically be reformed.

There is an enormous wealth of material in these two books, and there is no way I can do justice to this in the 10 pages that I am allotted. I concentrate my remarks on household taxation and transfers, which is discussed in Chapters 2 and 6 of Mirrlees et al. (2010) and in Chapters 3–5 and 13 of Mirrlees et al. (2011).