This paper utilises the discontinuities induced by earnings caps for social security contributions (SSC) in Germany to analyse the effect of SSC on gross labour earnings. Economic incidence is identified by exploiting an increase of a regional earnings cap of health and long-term care insurance as a natural experiment. Based on administrative data, difference-in-differences models are estimated. I ...
If the desire is to provide tax relief to households with lower and middle incomes in Germany, it is necessary to target the valueadded tax rather than the personal income tax. Lowering the standard value-added tax rate by one percentage point (from 19 to 18 percent) would mean relief worth 11 billion euro for consumers. The reduced value-added tax rate of seven percent should only be cut for food ...
This paper provides evidence on the question of who bears the burden of social security contributions (SSC) in Germany over a long-term horizon. Following Alvaredo et al. (De Econ, 2017) we exploit kinks in the budget set generated by a drop in the marginal SSC rate at earnings caps for health and long-term care insurance. These concave kinks lead to discontinuities in the distributions of gross earnings, ...
Completely eliminating the sharp rise in the tax rate for middle income households in Germany by changing personal income tax rates would mean estimated annual losses in tax revenue of 35 billion euros, or 1.1 percent of GDP. Taxpayers with high incomes would also benefit from this type of relief. The ten percent of the population with the highest income would have a relief of around 10.4 billion euros—over ...
This paper documents methodology underlying the construction of the integrated data base for our study on “Wer trägt die Steuerlast in Deutschland? - Verteilungswirkungen des deutschen Steuer- und Transfersystems” (Who bears the tax burden in Germany? – Distributional Analyses of the German tax and transfer system). Financial support from the Hans Böckler Stiftung for the project is gratefully acknowledged. ...
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 segments, but regressive in the lower income deciles. Income and corporate taxes are distinctly progressive. They impose hardly any burden on lower- and middle-income households, but the average ...
This paper documents methodology underlying the construction of the integrated data base for our study on “Wer trägt die Steuerlast in Deutschland? – Verteilungswirkungen des deutschen Steuer- und Transfersystems” (Who bears the tax burden in Germany? – Distributional Analyses of the German tax and transfer system). Financial support from the Hans Böckler Stiftung for the project is gratefully acknowledged. ...
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. They impose hardly any burden on lower- and middle-income households, but the average burden significantly ...