Discussion Papers no. 474
The Achilles heel of the dual income tax
The Norwegian case
The dual income tax provides the self-employed individual with large incentives to participate in tax minimizing income shifting. The present paper analyses the income shifting incentives under the Norwegian split model in the presence of technology risk, and it concludes that the widely held corporation serves as a tax shelter for high-income self-employed individuals. In addition, real capital investments with a low risk profile are means to shift income from the labor income tax base to the capital income tax base for the high-income self-employed.