On the Missing Curve in Usual Laffer Curve Analysis

The failure to include the Y(T) curve in the usual Laffer curve analysis makes it easy to overlook an important point. It is that the tax rate at which national income is maximized is necessarily lower than that at which tax revenues are maximized because the only way for tax revenues to peak (and then decline) as tax rates increase is for income to decline (in percentage terms; i.e., it is a matter of the tax rate elasticity of income) at the same (a faster) rate than that at which the tax rates increase.

--William Barnett II and Walter E. Block, "On the Use and Misuse of the Laffer Curve," in Essays in Austrian Economics (Bronx, NY: Ishi Press International, 2012), Kindle e-book, 90.