Tax expenditures are tax relief measures targeted at some socially desirable activities or specific groups of taxpayers. This paper reviews issues related to tax expenditures in the EU and presents some stylised facts related to tax expenditures in personal income taxation (PIT), value-added...

This paper analyses the effect of the COVID-19-induced labour market shock on household income, the at-risk-of-poverty (AROP) rate for children in Austria, and the buffering effect of the Austrian tax-benefit system. We apply Paulus & Tasseva’s (2020) decomposition analysis based on EUROMOD...

Carbon taxes on household consumption can simultaneously increase public funding and promote greener consumption habits, an appealing combination for the just transition plans of the European Union (EU). However, concerns about equity and public support pose challenges. This paper assesses the...

This paper explores the distributive impact of a hypothetical carbon tax on households’ transport and energy consumption in Belgium. It focuses on the welfare effects across population groups and along the income distribution, as well as on the expected budgetary and environmental effects,...

Consumption taxes are a crucial revenue source for EU Member States, yet they also potentially have non-negligible impact on income distribution. The EU’s tax-benefit microsimulation model, EUROMOD, has recently been extended to simulate consumption taxes (CT) across all 27 EU countries...

This paper investigates the role of non-contributory pension schemes in alleviating poverty among the elderly in the European Union. Non-contributory pensions, which are not linked to previous earnings or contributions, are a key element of public pension systems aimed at reducing poverty in old...

The Spanish Minimum Income scheme, introduced in 2020, offers beneficiaries a unique national guaranteed income as a last-resort benefit. However, the scheme's design featured a lack of work incentives for low earners, potentially leading to inactivity traps. To address this flaw the Spanish...

In 2022 inflation hit European economies in a severe way. To protect the purchasing power of households, EU Member States adopted a series of exceptional fiscal policy measures. In this paper, we turn our focus on wage indexation schemes, a policy option that has been relatively less explored in...

Proponents of a basic income (BI) claim that it could bring significant reductions in financial poverty, on top of many other benefits, including greatly reduced administrative complexity and cost. Using microsimulation analysis in a comparative two-country setting, we show that the potential...

The cost of childcare has a significant impact on the decision of parents – particularly mothers – to work. Prior to the introduction of subsidies for formal childcare in Ireland in 2019 through the National Childcare Scheme (NCS), the cost of full-time centre-based childcare was among the...