---
title: "Automation and Optimal Taxation: A Task-Based Theory · AI Fault Line"
url: https://aifaultline.com/research/p/title-c6436cc68d062ce5/
description: "AI Fault Line is a neutral, evidence-cited field guide to why experts looking at the same developments disagree about AI's effect on productivity, jobs, inequality, regulation and the pace of change."
---

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# Automation and Optimal Taxation: A Task-Based Theory

Henrik Kleven, Owen M. Zidar · NBER Working Papers · September 2026

[Read original source](https://www.nber.org/papers/w35747)

Where this sits in the debate

- [Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates?](https://aifaultline.com/debate/jobs/)

- [Will AI widen inequality?](https://aifaultline.com/debate/inequality/) · its finding: it depends ([why studies differ](https://aifaultline.com/debate/inequality/#why))

- [Should governments act on AI now?](https://aifaultline.com/debate/regulation/)

Direction of the finding as read from the abstract by an AI model ([AI-written](https://aifaultline.com/about/)).

## Abstract

We characterize optimal labor and capital income taxation in a task-based model of automation. Workers and machines are perfect substitutes in automatable tasks, which run from the bottom of the skill distribution up to a threshold. Workers supply labor on the extensive margin. Capitalists supply

## About this publication

**Working paper.** A working paper — circulated for discussion before formal peer review, the standard first outlet in economics.

Published

2026

Citations

Not recorded for this source

Citation counts come from OpenAlex; none are recorded for this source — absence of a count is not absence of citations.

[Chart: published 2026]

## More on this topic

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- [The Effects of Generative AI on High Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-2139-ssrn-4945566/) SSRN · 2024

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