Noch in diesem Jahr wird sich das Bundesverfassungsgericht mit der Frage befassen, ob die Pendlerpauschale mit dem Grundgesetz vereinbar ist. Angerufen wurde das Verfassungsgericht im letzten Jahr von zwei Finanzgerichten der ersten Instanz, sowie Anfang dieses Jahres vom Bundesfinanzhof. Die...

In the year 2000, the German government passed the most ambitious tax reform in postwar German history aiming at a significant tax relief for households. An important aim of this tax reform was to improve work incentives and, thereby, foster employment. Drawing on data of the German Socio...

We investigate how personal income taxes affect the portfolio share of personal wealth that entrepreneurs invest in their own business. In a reformulation of the standard portfolio choice model that allows for underreporting of private business income to tax authorities, we show that a fall in...

This paper provides formulas for optimal top marginal tax rates when couples are taxed according to income splitting between spouses, consumption is taxed, and the skill distribution is unbounded. Optimal top marginal income tax rates are computed for Germany using a dataset that includes the...