During the last decade, research on income inequality has paid special attention to top income earners. At the same time, top marginal tax rates on upper income earners have declined sharply in many OECD countries. Discussions are still open on the relationship between the increase of the income...

This paper focuses on the study of the effects on social welfare generated by the scheme of joint taxation of the Spanish Personal Income Tax (PIT), whose peculiarity linked to its condition of optionality, allows the minimization of households´ tax bill. Different scenarios are simulated using...

"Polarisation" wird im Allgemeinen als ein Hervortreten von Gegensätzen verstanden. Bezogen auf Einkommen sind die Begriffe "Unter-, Mittel- und Oberschicht" gemeint. Bildet sich die Mittelschicht zurück, so besteht die resultierende Gesellschaft lediglich aus einer unteren bzw. einer oberen...

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...