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...

The paper presents a comparative study of systems for withholding income tax on wages and identifies those that can be used in developing countries and countries in transition. The withholding system should be simple and reduce the need for return filing as much as possible. Collection of social...

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 economy. Studies of the effective tax rate--that is, a measurement of the net amount of tax levied on certain economic activities--provide...

This paper offers a first empirical investigation of how labor taxation (income and payroll taxes) affects individuals' well-being. For identification, we exploit exogenous variation in tax rules over time and across demographic groups using 26 years of German panel data. We find that the tax...