In 2018, the European Council and the UK and Spanish governments each proposed to introduce a Digital Services Tax (DST), to be levied on the revenue of large digital platform companies earned from advertising, online intermediation, and/or the transmission of data. We offer a rationalization of...

The European Commission is evaluating the performance of the common VAT, which has many shortcomings. The numerous exemptions and differentiated rate structures violate the logic and functionality of the VAT. The exemptions distort input choices and outsourcing policies. Reduced rates are...

This paper provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of the role of discretionary fiscal policy for inflation differentials across the 19 euro area countries over the period 1999-2019. The results confirm existing (older) literature that it is difficult to find robust evidence of the fiscal...

There is often a gap between the prescriptions of an 'optimal' tax system and actual tax systems, some of which can be neither efficient economically nor efficient at redistributing income. With a focus on personal income taxes, this paper reviews the political economics literature on tax...

Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result of differences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that paves the debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, we estimate labor...

There is clear evidence that fairness plays a role in redistribution. Individuals want to compensate others for their misfortune, while they allow them to enjoy the fruits of their effort. This paper introduces fairness in a tax-benefit scheme that is based on several characteristics in order to...

This study discusses European Commission's recent proposal to combat VAT fraud by taxing intra-Community supplies at a common rate of 15%, accompanied by the internal correction of input-tax gap between an importer and his own national tax authority, which is caused by the national VAT rate...