Search

Bias in Tax Progressivity Estimates

Tax progressivity is central in public and political debates when questions of vertical equity are raised. Applied, structural research demands a simple way to capture it. A power function approximation delivers one parameter that captures the residual income elasticity - a summary measure of progressivity. This approximation is accurate, tractable, and interpretable, and hence immensely popular. The ...

GETTSIM – Contributions to an Open Source Tax- and Transfers Simulator

This project serves to further develop the open source software GETTSIM. GETTSIM is a simulation model written in the programming language Python, which can depict the German tax and transfer system. The software offers a multitude of applications in research and teaching. It is developed in cooperation with the IZA (Institute of Labor Economics) as well as other German research institutes and...

Do Business Tax Rates Affect Real Investment?

Policymakers widely use tax-based incentives to spur investment and stimulate economic growth. Tax policy has been at the center of emergency measures during the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is now as countries face a significant deterioration in public finances. Yet, empirical tax research is still in disagreement on how taxes affect business investment. We investigate the effect of local business...

Sin Taxes and Self-Control

According to theory, "sin taxes" are welfare improving if consumers with low self-control respond at least as much to the tax as consumers with high self-control. We investigate empirically if demand response to soft drink and fat tax variations in Denmark depends on consumers' self-control. We use a unique home-scan panel that includes a survey measure of self-control. When taxes increase, consumers ...

Better Early than Never – The Effects of Anticipated Gift Tax Changes on Business Transfers

Wealth transfer taxes are important instruments to counter increasing wealth inequality. Yet, inter-generational business transfers, whose distribution is particularly concentrated at the top, are inherently difficult to tax. This is due to preferential tax treatments in many countries and sophisticated tax avoidance strategies by business owners. We analyze how business transfers react to...

Global Tax Evasion: How large is the problem and what to do about it?

Is global tax evasion falling or rising? Are new issues emerging, and if so, what are they? Have governments been effective in addressing tax evasion over the past 10 years? What has worked so far and what are some policies for the future? Gabriel Zucman, founding director of the EU Tax Observatory, and Sarah Godar will present key result from the inaugural Global Tax Evasion Report. The report...

Rising Allowances, Rising Rates — Can Growth Arise through Business Income Tax Reform despite Government Debt Limit?

The system of business income taxation consists of two instruments, namely a statutory tax rate and a depreciation allowance on investment. We will show in this paper that by acting on both instruments simultaneously it is possible to achieve both a growth and a fiscal net revenue target even in cases when a trade-off prevails when each instrument is used individually.As will be shown in the paper, ...

WR43-44-2024-Klimapraemie-Infografik-highres.jpg

The role of inherited wealth for wealth inequality in Germany

In this project, a top-corrected wealth distribution is estimated on the basis of the inheritance tax statistics and the SOEP. We analyze the concentration of wealth, the portfolios of the wealthy, the importance of inherited wealth, the gender inheritance gap and the gender wealth gap as well as reactions to inheritance taxation.

Optimal Taxation When the Tax Burden Matters

Survey evidence shows that the magnitude of the tax liability plays a role in value judgements about which groups deserve tax breaks. We demonstrate that the German tax-transfer system conflicts with a welfarist inequality averse social planner. It is consistent with a planner who is averse to both inequality and high tax liabilities. The tax-transfer schedule reflects non-welfarist value judgements ...