• Capital Income Taxation
• Dynamic Optimal Taxation
• Ramsey Problem

The scope of the thesis is to analyse the literature about the theory of optimal capital income taxation, starting from Ramsey (1927) and arriving to nowadays. The first chapter is introductive, it examines and decomposes the revenues from taxation in seven different OECD countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, United Kingdom and USA. In the second chapter starts the exploration of the optimal capital income taxation theory by analysing two branches of literature preliminary and complementary to the zero capital income taxation theorem: the commodities taxation theory and the estimation of the welfare loss induced by a tax on capital income. The third chapter contains the core of the thesis: the formalisation of the zero capital income taxation theorem by Judd (1985) and Chamley (1986). Furthermore, this chapter discusses the reinforcement and the extensions of the result to different specifications of the economy. Instead, the fourth chapter illustrates the conditions under which the Chamley-Judd zero capital income result ceases to hold. Finally, the mathematical appendix has the scope to provide a detailed analytical discussion of the derivation of the Chamley-Judd result.