Taxing imputed income from owner-occupation: distributional implications of alternative packages

<p>The tax treatment of housing has been a subject of continuing debate in the UK, as in many other countries. Economists have often pointed to the exclusion of imputed income from owner-occupation from the income tax base as a major distortion. As a result, a tax on the imputed income of owner-occupiers has been one of the perennial suggestions for 'root-and-branch' reform of the tax treatment of housing. But there has been a dearth of empirical analysis of the distributional effects of such proposals. This paper aims to fill that gap. Thus it models the distributional effects of taxation of imputed rental income, and of some proxies to such a tax.</p>