German municipalities levy local business taxes by choosing a tax rate to apply to local business income, where the tax base is defined uniformly at the national level. Before the federal government's imposition of a minimum tax rate in 2004, some municipalities such as the tiny North Sea town...

This paper attempts to address two long standing questions in Public Finance: (i) why is the property tax, despite popular complaints about its fairness, the almost exclusive tax instrument used by local governments, and (ii) why do we consistently observe higher levels of governments undermine...

This paper analyzes how minimum local property tax rates affect local tax policy choice. In Finland, central government has raised the limits on property tax rates several times in the past 30 years. I construct a measure of forced tax rate increases caused by these reforms and examine how...

In an earlier paper we analyzed a method of combining traditional tax financed pay-as-you-go Social Security benefits with annuities financed by Personal Retirement Accounts. We showed that such a combination could maintain the level of retirement income projected in current Social Security law...

Using the TAXSIM model for the period 1962-95, we consider the federal tax system's impact as an automatic stabilizer. Despite the many changes in the tax system, there has been relatively little change in its role as an automatic stabilizer. We estimate that individual federal taxes offset...

This paper considers both theoretical quest ions and empirical measures of the effects of various policies of income and payroll taxation on labor supply. It emphasizes deadweight loss as the correct criterion of taxation evaluation, rather than merely output effects. Distributional issues are...

In this study the social security earnings test is shown to have a significant effect empirically on the labor supply of retirement aged men. A rich data file from the Social Security Administration containing accurate benefit information provides a cross- section sample of 65-70 year old...

This paper estimates the effect of payroll tax cuts on firm activity during economic downturns. We use two regional payroll tax cuts in Finland as well as the onset of the Great Recession to estimate the effect of the recession on firms treated by the payroll tax cuts compared to a similar...

This paper analyzes the response of earnings to payroll tax rates using a cohort-based reform in Greece. All individuals who started working on or after 1993 face permanently a much higher earnings cap for payroll taxes, creating a large and permanent discontinuity in marginal payroll tax rates...