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,...

The idea of higher wealth taxes to finance the mounting public debt in the wake of the financial crises is gaining ground in several OECD countries. We evaluate the revenue and distributional effects of a one-time capital levy on personal net wealth that is currently on the German political...

We set out and solve a static neoclassical model with a labor/leisure choice for agents and a government sector producing a Samuelsonian public good. Numerical solutions vary considerably with the elasticity of substitution for commodities in an agent's utility function. We focus on solutions...

In 2008, the Swedish property tax was reformed and a cap on yearly tax liabilities was introduced. A large fraction of owner occupied houses was subject to a substantial decrease in the tax. When the reform was announced, most analysts projected - in line with tax capitalization theory - that...

In the beginning of the 1980s, Cameroon witnessed a sustained rate of growth, associated essentially with the boom in the oil sector. Increased budgetary and extra-budgetary resources generated by this sector helped to raise the investment rate in the economy, and to maintain a reasonable level...

Due to limited access to foreign savings after the 2008 crisis, transition economies are forced to rely more on domestic savings in financing their growth. In that respect, it is often argued that the government should use tax policy to encourage domestic savings. Since the personal income tax...

The book offers a comprehensive treatment of tax theory and policy. It surveys the German tax system, portrays tax history, and describes principles of tax administration and the construction of schedules. Tax shifting, optimal taxation theory, and questions of tax justice are considered in...

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the single most important transfer program in place in the United States. An aspect of the EITC that has received little attention thus far is its role as a public insurance program. Yet, the structure of the EITC necessarily protects its primary class of...

A comprehensive, microdata-based analysis of the German tax system's distributional effects in 2015 shows that the total tax burden from direct and indirect taxes is slightly progressive on higher income, but regressive in the lower deciles. Income and corporate taxes are distinctly progressive....

Eine umfassende mikrodatenbasierte Analyse zu den Verteilungswirkungen des deutschen Steuersystems im Jahr 2015 zeigt, dass die gesamte Steuerbelastung aus direkten und indirekten Steuern bei steigenden Einkommen nur moderat progressiv verläuft und in den unteren Dezilen regressiv wirkt. Zwar...