There is often a gap between the prescriptions of an optimal tax system and actual tax systems, some of which can be … reviews the political economics literature on tax systems and reforms to see whether political mechanisms allow us to better … understand why tax systems look the way they look. Finally, we exploit a database of reforms in labour taxation in the European …

We augment a standard tax model by concerns about tax equity: people get upset when labour is taxed more heavily than … capital. Even the slightest concern for tax equity invalidates the common recommendation for small open economies that capital … should remain tax-exempt. This holds for exogenous as well as for endogenous government expenditures and irrespective of …

wages, assume that a higher employee-borne tax burden reduces effort. In turn, this raises a firm's production costs and … reduces efficiency. Accordingly, we show that a higher employee-borne income tax negatively influences a multinational …'s profit by reducing manager effort. Furthermore, we compile data on personal income tax profiles for 49 economies and the year …

personal income tax profiles for 49 economies and the year 2002. In particular, we determine the component of labor taxes which …, we calculate the progressivity of personal income tax rates between the average wage and five times the average wage …. This may be interpreted as the tax progression which is relevant for well-paid workers. Then, we use the personal income …

saving programme rather than as a tax-and-transfer system, thereby raising labour force participation rates but also …

-material values over material things. We incorporate this notion into a simple tax model for a small open economy. We show that a … postmaterialism are developed from the World Values Surveys. Their impact on the tax mix is highly significant and goes into the …