See "The Efficiency of the Legal System versus the Income Tax in redistributing Income."Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell.Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. XXIII, no. 2, pp. 667-681, (June 1994).

A later working paper by the authors on the same topic is available online.

I first heard a version of their argument in a talk by Professor Yew-Kwang Ng of Monash university many years ago, but have not yet located a published version.