We analyse recent proposals to shift the tax burden away from low-paid labour, assuming a dual labour market where the "good"high-paying jobs are rationed. A shift in the tax burden from low-paid to high-paid workers has an ambiguous effect on the level of aggregate employment while the...

A Norwegian tax reform committee recently proposed a personal tax on the realized income from shares after deduction for an imputed risk-free rate of return. This paper describes the design of the proposed shareholder income tax and shows that it will be approximately neutral in several...

The paper discusses the recent drive towards a system of dual income taxation (DIT) in the Nordic countries. The pure version of this system combines progressive taxation of labour and transfer incomes with a proportional tax on income from capital at a level equal to the corporate income tax...

The tax bias in favour of debt finance under the corporate income tax means that corporate debt ratios exceed the socially optimal level. This creates a rationale for thin-capitalization rules limiting the amount of debt that qualifies for interest deductibility. This paper sets up a model of...

When companies finance their investment via the international markets for stocks and bonds, relief from domestic personal taxes on dividends and capital gains will not reduce the cost of capital. Some authors have shown that even for small domestic companies whose shares are not traded...

A guide to current approaches to measuring the effective tax rate, with case studies that illustrate the different methods discussed.Today's highly complicated tax codes have led economists and policy makers depend on simplified summary measures in order to understand how taxes affect the...

In the year 2000, the German government passed the most ambitious tax reform in postwar German history aiming at a significant tax relief for households. An important aim of this tax reform was to improve work incentives and, thereby, foster employment. Drawing on data of the German Socio...

We analyze the distribution and taxation of top incomes in Germany during the 1990s on the basis of individual tax returns data. We derive a measure of economic income from taxable gross income as reported in the tax returns. Thanks to complete sampling, we can deliver a very precise description...