Topic Taxes

100 Years of the Modern German Tax System: Foundation, Reforms, and Challenges

The tax and fiscal reforms headed by German finance minister Matthias Erzberger in 1919 and 1920 fundamentally reshaped German public finances. The total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, or tax-to-GDP ratio, doubled and increased continually until the end of World War II. Since the 1950s, the tax-to-GDP ratio has remained between 22 and 24 percent of GDP most of the time. West Germany’s economic ...

Health-Related Life Cycle Risks and Public Insurance

Based on a dynamic life cycle model, this study analyzes health-related risks of consumption and old-age poverty. The model allows for health effects on employment risks, on productivity, on longevity, the correlation between health risks, productivity and preferences, and the financial incentives of the German public insurance schemes. The estimation uses data on male employees and an extended expectation-maximization ...

Ecological Tax Revenue Still Yields Lower Pension Contributions and Higher Pensions Today

The ecological tax reform that Germany implemented between 1999 and 2003 increased energy tax rates—especially on gasoline and diesel. Today, the ecological tax hikes yield an annual revenue of around 20 billion euros or 0.6 percent of GDP. The money is used to finance a higher federal grant to the public pension scheme. Calculations based on a pension simulation model show that the contribution rate ...

The new grand coalition’s work program: DIW Berlin says there is still much to improve

In important areas such as tax policy, education, and energy, the future grand coalition must be considerably more ambitious – The need for reform in Germany is not being addressed sufficiently Germany’s next government will most likely once again be a grand coalition. However, the results of the preliminary coalition talks between the Union parties and the SPD, which serve as a basis ...

Effectiveness of Early Retirement Disincentives: Individual Welfare, Distributional and Fiscal Implications

In aging societies, information on how to reform pension systems is essential to policy makers. This study scrutinizes effects of early retirement disincentives on retirement behavior, individual welfare, pensions and public budget. We employ administrative pension data and a detailed model of the German tax and social security system to estimate a structural dynamic retirement model. We find that ...

Video Recordings in Experiments – Are There Effects on Self-Selection or the Outcome of the Experiment?

The use of video recordings in experimental economics has become increasingly popular. However, little attention is paid to how this might affect the composition of the participating subjects and the intended treatment effect. We make a first attempt to shed light on these issues and address them in an incentivized face-to-face tax compliance experiment. The experiment contains two dimensions; i) the ...

100 Jahre deutsches Steuersystem: Revolution und Evolution

Die „Erzbergerschen Steuer- und Finanzreformen“ 1919/20 haben das deutsche Steuer- und Finanzsystem nahezu vollständig umgestaltet, modernisiert und stark ausgebaut. Wesentliche Elemente dieser Reformen haben bis heute Bestand– die Grundstrukturen des Steuersystems und der Steuerrechtsordnung sowie der zentralistische kooperative Finanzföderalismus. Das NS-Regime konsolidierte die Reformen und erhöhte ...

How do Fuel Taxes Impact New Car Purchases? An Evaluation Using French Consumer-level Data

Abolishing the final withholding tax leads to tax revenue losses and barely burdens high-income groups

Small revenue and distribution effects – Overall, slight tax revenue losses due to a period of low interest rates – Raising the final withholding tax rate to over 25 percent would result in moderate additional revenue Abolishing the final flat-rate 25 percent withholding tax on unearned income makes sense neither from a fiscal nor a distribution point of view as long as interest rates ...

"Relief for the middle class through value-added tax cuts": Six questions for Stefan Bach

Mr. Bach, to what extent could cutting the value-added tax rate relieve low- and middle-income earners? If you want to provide significant fiscal relief to lower and middle income groups, you should focus more on the valueadded tax and less on the income tax. The value-added tax puts the burden on consumption, and consumer spending accounts for a much higher proportion of lower incomes than higher ...