The inequality in pre-tax income increases in Norway in the 1990s, while the distribution of taxes is about unaltered. This means that tax progressivity has decreased in the period, as measured by summary indices of tax progressivity. This paper discusses to what extent this observed decrease in...

The goals of income transfer systems in the US and the UK for low-income families are to reduce poverty and welfare dependency and encourage work. Both the US and UK have made in-work benefits a key part of their strategy through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Working Families' Tax...

<p>In this paper we provide an overview of the literature relating labour supply to taxes and welfare benefits with a focus on presenting the empirical consensus. We begin with a basic continuous hours model, where individuals have completely free choice over their hours of work. We then consider...</p>

Given that structural labor supply models continue to play a key role in the process of policy design, it is important to validate their capacity to provide reasonable predictions of alternative hypothetical policy options. Comparing outcomes before and after a realized policy change (such as a...

Procedures of revenue estimation of changes in the personal income tax are discussed. Using revenue estimates of the 2006 tax cuts in the personal income tax in Norway as an example, we show that estimates of costs of cuts differ substantially when different effects are brought into...

We develop and estimate a microeconometric model of household labour supply in five European countries representative of different economies and welfare policy regimes: Denmark, Italy, Norway, Portugal and United Kingdom. We then simulate, under the constraint of constant total net tax revenue,...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and adopt a generalised version of Roemer's (1998) Equality of Opportunity (EOp) framework for analysing optimal income taxation. EOp optimal tax rules seek to equalise income differentials arising from factors beyond the control of the individual....

Identifying the effect of differential taxation on portfolio allocation requires exogenous variation in marginal tax rates. Marginal tax rates vary with income, but income surely affects portfolio choice directly. In systems of individual taxation - like Canada's - couples with the same...

The UK's Labour Government has expanded means-testing of social security but attempted to do so while minimising the disincentive effects typically associated with such an approach. We test whether it has succeeded by reviewing the effect of 5 years of reforms on a range of incentives across the...

This paper uses a survey-based approach to test alternative methods of channeling tax relief to donors - as a tax rebate for the donor or as a matched payment to the receiving charity. On accounting grounds these two are equivalent but, in line with earlier experimental studies, we find that...