In the tax policy debate, differentiation of value-added taxes is often justified by distributional concerns. Our quantitative analysis for Germany indicates that such concerns are misplaced. We find that the abolition of VAT differentiation has only negligible redistributive effects. Instead,...

We study the welfare effects of combining the European Commission's proposal for VAT harmonization with different degrees of weakening of the 'quotient familial' , a feature of the French system of direct taxation which can be interpreted as aiming at taxing 'equivalised' household income. We...

Should tax reforms be guided by rules of thumb suggested by the IMF, or directions or reform based on analytical approaches, such as optimal tax theory? In many cases, the applications of the directions of reform—which suggest a differentiation of the structure given distributional, incentive...

Der Beitrag untersucht Paul Kirchhofs Vorschlag einer fundamentalen Mehrwertsteuerreform.

In der Regierungskoalition wird eine Abschaffung des ermäßigten Mehrwertsteuersatzes diskutiert. Umstritten ist, ob die Steuerermäßigungen für Grundnahrungsmittel und Kulturgüter erhalten bleiben sollen. Simulationsanalysen des DIW Berlin zeigen, dass die Mehrwertsteuer auf Nahrungsmittel...