[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ipt/taxref/201605.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Evaluating options for shifting tax burden to top income earners

Author

Listed:
  • Jorge Onrubia

    (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

  • Fidel Picos

    (European Commission - JRC)

  • María del Carmen Rodado

    (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos)

Abstract
During the last decade, research on income inequality has paid special attention to top income earners. At the same time, top marginal tax rates on upper income earners have declined sharply in many OECD countries. Discussions are still open on the relationship between the increase of the income share of the richest and to what extent the tax burden should be shifted towards top income earners. In this paper we analyse these questions by building and computing a theoretical framework using the decomposition by income groups proposed by Lambert and Aronson (1993) and Alvaredo (2011). We show that for three types of revenue-neutral reforms based on Pfähler (1984) the redistributive effect is always higher than before the reform. When the size of the rich group is sufficiently small we also find that the best option is allocating tax changes proportionally to net income, and the worst doing it proportionally to tax liabilities.

Suggested Citation

  • Jorge Onrubia & Fidel Picos & María del Carmen Rodado, 2016. "Evaluating options for shifting tax burden to top income earners," JRC Working Papers on Taxation & Structural Reforms 2016-05, Joint Research Centre.
    • Handle: RePEc:ipt:taxref:201605
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC104316
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    2. Alvaredo, Facundo, 2011. "A note on the relationship between top income shares and the Gini coefficient," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 274-277, March.
    3. Jakobsson, Ulf, 1976. "On the measurement of the degree of progression," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1-2), pages 161-168.
    4. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2014. "Optimal Taxation of Top Labor Incomes: A Tale of Three Elasticities," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 230-271, February.
    5. Kakwani, Nanok C, 1977. "Measurement of Tax Progressivity: An International Comparison," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 87(345), pages 71-80, March.
    6. Lambert, Peter J & Aronson, J Richard, 1993. "Inequality Decomposition Analysis and the Gini Coefficient Revisited," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(420), pages 1221-1227, September.
    7. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00944873 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. R. A. Musgrave & Tun Thin, 1948. "Income Tax Progression, 1929-48," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(6), pages 498-498.
    9. Rietveld, Piet, 1990. "Multidimensional inequality comparisons : On aggravation and mitigation of inequalities," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 187-192, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Onrubia Fernández, Jorge & Picos, Fidel & Rodado, María del Carmen, 2019. "Shifting tax burden to top income earners: What is the best way to reduce inequality?," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 13, pages 1-31.
    2. Junyi Zhu, 2014. "Bracket Creep Revisited - with and without r > g: Evidence from Germany," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 23(3), pages 106-158, November.
    3. Chakravarty, Satya R. & Sarkar, Palash, 2022. "A synthesis of local and effective tax progressivity measurement," MPRA Paper 115180, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Checherita-Westphal, Cristina & Attinasi, Maria Grazia & Rieth, Malte, 2011. "Labour tax progressivity and output volatility: evidence from OECD countries," Working Paper Series 1380, European Central Bank.
    5. Heathcote, Jonathan & Storesletten, Kjetil & Violante, Giovanni L., 2020. "Optimal progressivity with age-dependent taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    6. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 1997. "Statistical Inference for the Measurement of the Incidence of Taxes and Transfers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(6), pages 1453-1466, November.
    7. Lambert Peter J. & Thoresen Thor O., 2012. "The Inequality Effects of a Dual Income Tax System," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-17, July.
    8. Salvatore Morelli & Timothy Smeeding & Jeffrey Thompson, 2014. "Post-1970 Trends in Within-Country Inequality and Poverty: Rich and Middle Income Countries," CSEF Working Papers 356, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    9. Claudia Gerber & Mr. Alexander D Klemm & Ms. Li Liu & Mr. Victor Mylonas, 2018. "Personal Income Tax Progressivity: Trends and Implications," IMF Working Papers 2018/246, International Monetary Fund.
    10. Brzeziński, Michał & Myck, Michal & Najsztub, Mateusz, 2019. "Reevaluating Distributional Consequences of the Transition to Market Economy in Poland: New Results from Combined Household Survey and Tax Return Data," IZA Discussion Papers 12734, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Deppermann, Andre & Grethe, Harald & Offermann, Frank, 2011. "Distributional Effects of the CAP on Western German Farm Incomes and Regional Farm Income Disparity," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 114442, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    12. Chung Tran & Nabeeh Zakariyya, 2019. "Tax Progressivity in Australia: Facts, Measurements and Estimates," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2019-667, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    13. Reto Foellmi & Isabel Z. Martínez, 2017. "Volatile Top Income Shares in Switzerland? Reassessing the Evolution between 1981 and 2010," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(5), pages 793-809, December.
    14. Enrico Rubolino & Daniel Waldenström, 2020. "Tax progressivity and top incomes evidence from tax reforms," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 18(3), pages 261-289, September.
    15. Peter J. Lambert & Wilhelm Pfähler, 1988. "On Aggregate Measures of the Net Redistributive Impact of Taxation and Government Expenditure," Public Finance Review, , vol. 16(2), pages 178-202, April.
    16. Pablo Astorga, 2015. "Functional Inequality in Latin America: News from the Twentieth Century," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _135, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    17. Victor Amoureux & Elvire Guillaud & Michaël Zemmour & Thomas Breda & Laurent Caussat & Janet C Gornick Vi & Bruno Palier, 2019. "L'impact redistributif des modèles socio-fiscaux de protection sociale : analyse comparée internationale 1," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-03526560, HAL.
    18. Urban, Ivica, 2017. "Measuring income redistribution: beyond the proportionality standard," EUROMOD Working Papers EM1/17, EUROMOD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    19. Bartels, Charlotte & Waldenström, Daniel, 2021. "Inequality and top incomes," GLO Discussion Paper Series 959, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    20. Salvatore Morelli, 2018. "Banking crises in the US: the response of top income shares in a historical perspective," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(2), pages 257-294, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    inequality; personal income tax; redistribution; top incomes;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ipt:taxref:201605. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Publication Officer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ipjrces.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.