During March of 2021, a surprising narrative arose in the media – U.S. states not only did not incur decreases in tax collection during COVID-19, but many states saw substantial increases in collection. We consider this outcome from the perspective of progressive tax rates, income inequality,...

The authors analyze to what extent and how the tax burden should be shifted towards top income earners in order to reduce income inequality. Starting from Lambert and Aronson (Inequality decomposition analysis and the Gini coefficient revisited 1993) and Alvaredo (A note on the relationship...

The authors analyze to what extent and how the tax burden should be shifted towards top income earners in order to reduce income inequality. Starting from Lambert and Aronson (Inequality decomposition analysis and the Gini coefficient revisited 1993) and Alvaredo (A note on the relationship...

The income tax taxes the proceeds from market work, but not the proceeds from time otherwise allocated - whether enjoyed as self-provided goods and services or leisure time per se. A two-earner couple that out-sources household and child care services, for instance, pays for these services with...

Personal Income Tax (PIT) is one of the key sources of revenues in Advanced Economies (AEs) but plays a much more limited role in Low-Income Developing Countries (LIDCs) and Emerging Market Economies (EMEs), both in terms of revenue and redistributive impact. Notwithstanding, this paper shows...

This paper analyzes the effect of the introduction of a final withholding tax on capital income on the progression of the German income tax. As previous literature shows, even with synthetic income taxation, tax progression was strongest in the middle of the income distribution, and decreased...

Analysis of the relationship between taxes and self-employment should account for the interplay between responses in self-employment and wage employment. To this end, we estimate a two-state multi-spell duration model which accounts for both observed and unobserved heterogeneity using a large...

Does an income tax harm economic efficiency more the more progressive it is? Public economics provides a strong case for a definite ‘yes’. But at least three forces may pull in the other direction. First, low-wage workers may on average have more elastic labour supply schedules than...

Deutschland wird häufig ein im europäischen Vergleich überdurchschnittliches Abgabenniveau bescheinigt. Da dies als eine der Hauptursachen für vergleichsweise schwaches Wachstum und hohe Arbeitslosigkeit gilt, werden in der wirtschaftspolitischen Debatte vermehrt Reformen des progressiven...