Contributions and Pension Payments in a Decision-Neutral Income Tax

This paper discusses how payments from and contributions to a life annuity or a pension scheme can be taxed decision neutrally in the context of a classical income tax. We use the concept of "economic income" in the sense of Johansson and Samuelson. Within the framework of an economic analysis life annuities and pension schemes can be treated as investments. Under an ideal neutral income tax, the decision to make such lifetime-dependent investments should not be distorted by taxation. Ideally, taxation should not distort the decision between lifetime-dependent and other investments. The specificity of the approach adopted herein is that neutrality of taxation holds ex ante and also ex post if the amount of pension claims is not yet known during the accumulation period, as it is the case with the pay-as-you-go public pension scheme in Germany and many other countries