Existing tax schedules are often overly complex and characterized by discontinuities in the marginal tax burden. In this paper we propose a class of progressive smooth functions to replace personal income tax schedules. These functions depend only on three meaningful parameters, and avoid the...

This paper studies optimal unemployment benefit levels and optimal proportional income tax rates over the business cycle. Previous research suggests that policy makers should make unemployment insurance (UI) dependent on the business cycle because the UI system can be used to smooth consumption...

This study contributes to the female labor supply responsiveness literature by measuring the effect of tax-benefit policies on female labor supply based on a broad sample of 26 European countries in 2005-2010. The tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD is used to calculate a measure of work...

The purpose of the paper is to provide a discussion of the various approaches for accounting for labour supply responses in microsimulation models. The paper focuses attention on two methodologies for modelling labour supply: the discrete choice model and the random utility – random...

The Polish tax and benefit system is presented in the context of a recently developed microsimulation model, SIMPL. The model allows simulating direct taxes, social contributions and public benefits in Poland for the years 2003 and 2005. It is based on the Household Budgets Survey data (Badania...

Recent research on the behavioral effects of income taxes has to a large extent focused onthe elasticity of taxable income with respect to the net-of-tax rate, i.e., one minus themarginal tax rate. We offer new evidence on this matter by making use of a large panel ofSwedish tax payers over the...

We estimate the responses of gross labor earnings with respect to marginal and average net-of-tax rates in France over the period 2003-2006. We exploit a series of reforms to the income-tax and the payroll-tax schedules that affect individuals who earn less than twice the minimum wage. Our...

The Mirrlees Review of the UK tax system, together with its companion volume of research papers, can be expected to influence future discussions of tax reform. Indeed, this can already be recognised in the Henry Review. As far as income taxation is concerned, the most substantive recommendation...

Among OECD countries, the Netherlands has average female labor force participation, but by far the highest rate of part-time work. This paper investigates the extent to which married women respond to financial incentives. We exploit the exogenous variation caused by a substantial Dutch tax...

Entrepreneurial activity is often regarded as an engine for economic growth and job creation. Through tax policy, governments possess a potential lever to influence the decisions of economic agents to start and close small businesses. In Germany, the top marginal income tax rates were reduced...