Existing tax schedules are often overly complex and characterized by discontinuities in the marginal tax burden. In this paper we propose a class of progressive smooth functions to replace personal income tax schedules. These functions depend only on three meaningful parameters, and avoid the...

In empirical analysis, the Kakwani index is the most frequently used indicator for comparing progressivity across countries and over time. The Kakwani is often assumed to measure to what extent a policy design is targeted to the poor. It has, however, a major drawback: it is not defined for net...

This paper offers a framework to establish a micro-based budget and welfare evaluation of a joint reform in personal income taxes, social security contributions and indirect taxes. One often lacks an encompassing model for both labour supply decisions in real world tax and benefit contexts and...