Over the last few years concern for income inequality in European countries has increased remarkably. In this context, taxation is an important redistributive instrument and we investigate the redistributive role of direct taxes. We focus on the EU-15 countries and the evolution over the period...

Redistribution is usually understood in terms of income; as a way to rank individuals as well as to determine taxable capacity or benefit eligibility. Yet, it is increasingly argued that more prominence should be given to the joint distribution of income and wealth and interest into the taxation...

We explore the prospects for using the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) dataset as an underlying micro-database for the EU taxbenefit model, EUROMOD. This will allow expanding the policy domains currently covered in EUROMOD with dimensions like wealth taxation,...

The need for more comprehensive and integrated data on individual well-being is widely recognised. In order to identify better measures of economic performance in a complex economy and thus going Beyond GDP, Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi (2009) recommend to consider income, consumption and wealth...

Expanding childcare is often considered as a suitable way to enhance employment opportunities of mothers with young children as well as to reduce child poverty. In this study the authors critically investigate this assertion by simulating a set of scenarios of increasing subsidized childcare...

Taxing wealth has received increased attention in both the academic and political debate, as a way to reduce inequality of both income and wealth. However, analytical tools are still underdeveloped when it comes to empirical analyses of different types of wealth-related taxes and policies. New...

Western countries' income tax systems exempt the return from investing in owner-occupied housing. Returns from other investments are instead taxed, thus distorting households' portfolio choices, although it is argued that housing property taxation might act as a counterbalance. Based on data...

Many researchers and policymakers have made strong arguments for broadening the taxes on wealth and its returns. Although the theoretical literature on (optimal) wealth taxation is growing, there exists a large void in empirical research. This paper addresses this void by analysing the...

This paper assesses the impact on household incomes of the COVID-19 pandemic and governments' policy responses in April 2020 in four large and severely hit European countries: Belgium, Italy, Spain and the UK. We provide comparative evidence on the level of relative and absolute welfare...

Imputed rental income of homeowners is tax exempt in most countries, despite the long-standing arguments recommending its inclusion in the tax base, on both equity and efficiency grounds. The current fiscal crisis revived interest towards this form of taxation. The paper investigates the fiscal...