The main proposals for the reform of payroll-based employers' social security contributions have been the (partial) replacement of the contribution by increased sales tax and the so called SII-contribution, in which the base would consist of the wage bill and the operating margin of the firm. In...

Hiring subsidies are widely used to create (stable) employment for the long-term unemployed. This paper exploits the abolition of a hiring subsidy targeted at long-term unemployed jobseekers older than 45 years of age in Belgium to evaluate its effectiveness in the short and medium run. Based on...

Hiring subsidies are widely used to create (stable) employment for the long-term unemployed. This paper exploits the abolition of a hiring subsidy targeted at long-term unemployed jobseekers older than 45 years of age in Belgium to evaluate its effectiveness in the short and medium run. Based on...

We identify several objectionable features of the German retirement benefit formula. Groups of insureds with higher than average life expectancy are subsidized by the rest of the members because the formula neglects differences in group-specific life expectancy. Moreover, undesirable long-run...

This paper surveys the empirical literature on the incidence of labour taxation, and Social Security contributions specifically. The goal is to analyse if the fiscal burden is borne by employees, consumers or firms. Despite the consensus in public finance handbooks (where workers are supposed to...

The redistributive effect of the Portuguese welfare state through pensions, benefits and income taxes is investigated in detail over the 2006- 2010 period using disposable income as benchmark. All social and fiscal policy instruments analysed contribute significantly to the reduction in...

We provide an estimate of the burden that current policies impose to present and future generations of Italians. Based on our computations, we argue that current fiscal policies are neither financially sustainable nor fair to future generations, due to the generous treatment awarded to past and...

In this paper we attempted to chart the impact of the early part of Ireland's economic crisis from 2008-2009 on the distribution of income. In order to decompose the impact of changes in different income components, we utilised a microsimulation methodology and the EU-SILC User Database. This...

Individuals in most all countries face a wide range of direct taxes on their income, especially variants of the individual income tax and payroll taxes. For the income tax, attempts are often made to reduce the compliance and administrative costs of the tax by using presumptive, or simplified,...

The U.S. Social Security levy is widely used by economists to illustrate the irrelevance of legal tax incidence for economic incidence. However, the levy's magnitude in conjunction with an asymmetry in the U.S. federal income tax code make the levy's legal incidence highly relevant for its...