Beurteilung der Verteilungswirkungen der „rot-grünen“ Einkommensteuerpolitik

On the basis of an empirical analysis we discuss two alternative criterions to quantify distribu-tional effects of the income tax cut enforced by the former German red-green-government. Distributional effects can be measured by the impact of a tax reform either on the distribution of income or the distribution of the tax burden. We show the importance of the applied crite-rion for the interpretation of the results. Furthermore, we highlight the problems of focussing on the impact of a tax reform on the net income of taxpayers. It seems preferable to assess distributional effects by the impact of a tax reform on the disproportionality of the tax burden.