This article investigates the impact of tax simplification on various indicators of the efficiency of the tax system and on the distribution of income. The analysis is based on a simulation model (FiFoSiM) using German income tax and household survey microdata. We model tax simplification as the...

This article is concerned with the question of how two-earner households should be taxed. One reason for the importance of this issue is simply the quantitative significance of households formed around couples. A second reason is that the economic theory of optimal taxation and tax reform, at...

This article analyses the switch to an Allowance for Corporate Equity (ACE) or to a Comprehensive Business Income Tax (CBIT) type of tax system starting from the present German tax system. We show that in case an ACE type of reform is financed by an increase in the VAT and not in the profit tax,...

In this article, I discuss the role a progressive income tax system and a redistributive pay as you go (PAYGO) social security system can play in insuring and reallocating idiosyncratic as well as aggregate risk. I also argue that the underlying source of market failures generating such a role...