This paper examines the taxation of housing in Israel, and proposes a set of reforms to improve the efficiency and fairness of the current system. Israel’s housing tax system faces similar problems to those of many other OECD countries. In particular, a bias arises in favour of owner-occupied...

This paper reassesses the often-made conclusion that the VAT is regressive, drawing on tax microsimulation models constructed for an unprecedented 27 OECD countries. The paper first assesses the competing methodological approaches used in previous distributional studies, highlighting the...

New evidence for 21 OECD countries shows that the distributional effects of energy taxes differ by energy carrier. On an expenditure basis, taxes on transport fuels are not regressive on average, as households in lower expenditure deciles spend a lower proportion of their expenditure on taxes on...

This paper examines the taxation of labour income in five key emerging economies: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa (the “BIICS” countries). The paper highlights the key features of the taxation of labour income in these countries, and then uses this information to model the...

This paper investigates the merits of increasing work incentives for low-income workers by shifting part of the tax burden from social security contributions (SSC) to consumption taxes (specifically VAT) in 13 European OECD countries. Simulation results based on household budget survey microdata...

This paper measures the effective taxation of housing investments in 40 OECD member and partner countries. The paper derives both Marginal Effective Tax Rates (METRs) and Average Effective Tax Rates (AETRs), which incorporate the stream of income and taxes over the life of the housing...