The over-generous boon: Tax splitting in Germany

This paper studies the perception of fairness of the income-tax splitting benefit of married couples under the German income-tax régime using interview data from 219 North German employees. The great majority of subjects disapprove of the present boon of tax splitting, which is considered as being excessive. No self-serving bias was observed in the responses. Tax benefits to married couples considered as justified are much smaller than under the present German tax régime. Moreover, the tax benefits which are perceived as equitable are relatively more generous for the higher income strata. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2002