We explore the design of impartial tax schemes in a simple setup where agents’ incomes are completely determined by their inborn talents. Building on Harsanyi’s veil-of-ignorance approach, we conceptualize an impartial observer who chooses a tax scheme without knowing her own preferences and the distribution of talents, and whose vNM preferences behind the veil obey Harsanyi’s principle of acceptance and are independent, in terms of utility-scale, of the distribution of talents. Our results in the resulting framework provide three main messages: (i) the veil of ignorance implies anonymity of tax schemes; (ii) the veil of ignorance generically rejects utilitarian tax schemes; (iii) the veil of ignorance endorses the (Rawlsian) leveling tax scheme.

我们在一个简单的设置中探索公平的税收计划的设计，其中代理人的收入完全取决于他们的天赋。基于 Harsanyi 的无知面纱方法，我们将一个公正的观察者概念化，该观察者在不知道自己的偏好和人才分布的情况下选择税收计划，并且面纱背后的 vNM 偏好遵循 Harsanyi 的接受原则并且在以下方面是独立的：效用规模，人才分布。我们在最终框架中的结果提供了三个主要信息：（i）无知的面纱意味着税收计划的匿名性；(ii) 无知的面纱一般拒绝功利主义的税收计划；(iii) 无知的面纱支持（罗尔斯式的）平税计划。