How should pensions be taxed? We propose income tax and National Insurance reforms that would more evenly support pension saving. Pensions are the biggest component of household wealth and are treated favourably by the tax system. That means getting pensions tax design right matters. It matters...

This paper presents an overlapping generations model where agents face labor-income and health risks in order to quantify the macroeconomic and welfare consequences of reform options for the German health care system. In addition to labor supply, consumption and savings, households also choose...

We use a youth payroll tax cut in Sweden to investigate whether retail firms that were exposed to substantial labor cost savings increased employment of minimum wage workers more than firms that received smaller labor cost savings. Our dataset includes information on both contracted wages and...

The German Federal Government has expanded subsidies for employees with low gross wages (midijob employees) as of January 1, 2023, and raised the upper earnings limit to 2,000 euros. As a result, around 6.2 million midijob employees will benefit from paying reduced social security contributions...

This paper develops a machine-learning method that allows researchers to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects with panel data in a setting with many covariates. Our method, which we name the dynamic causal forest (DCF) method, extends the causal-forest method of Wager and Athey (2018) by...

This paper investigates the effects of processing export on firms' social security contributions. A consistent pattern emerges that processing exporters in China have higher actual contributions relative to ordinary exporters, which is intriguing as they have been found to be inferior on various...

Economic models assume that payroll tax burdens fall fully on workers, but where does tax incidence fall when taxes are firm-specific and time-varying? Unemployment insurance in the United States has the key feature of varying both across employers and over time, creating the potential for labor...

To preserve social security as a welfare program primarily for older individuals and to ameliorate the distributional inequity of funding social security across income and wealth levels, this article recommends unbundling the benefit side of social security from its longstanding payroll tax...

Diese Analyse verbindet verschiedene Datenquellen, um die Altersverteilung von Steuern, Sozialabgaben, Transfers und staatlichen Sachleistungen auf der Personenebene für das Jahr 2021 abzubilden. Als Datengrundlage dient das Sozioökonomische Panel, mit dem die Altersverteilung auch nach...

This paper evaluates the impact of an employment subsidy scheme covering employers' social contribution costs on registered employment in small firms in Turkey. It utilizes a rich, firm-level administrative data set with monthly frequency, which allows for closely following the dynamics of...

This article introduces fiscal impoverishment as a novel framework for comparative poverty research. We invert standard analyses of welfare state policy and household poverty by focusing not on poverty alleviation but poverty creation and exacerbation. Using harmonized household survey data, we...

This paper documents facts about the structure of business taxation in China using administrative tax data from 2007 to 2011 from the State Taxation Administration. We first document the importance of different business taxes across industries. While corporate income taxes play an important role...

Population aging imposes a challenge for the public pension systems in many developed countries. The solvency of the pension system requires a broad set of policy measures. The paper addresses the following question: What are the macroeconomic consequences of increasing the social security...

This paper estimates the effect of payroll tax cuts on firm activity during economic downturns. We use two regional payroll tax cuts in Finland as well as the onset of the Great Recession to estimate the effect of the recession on firms treated by the payroll tax cuts compared to a similar...

This paper uses quasi-experimental variation in payroll taxes to estimate their incidence and investigate how firms use their input factors. We find that higher payroll tax rates lead to large employment responses and have no effects on employee earnings. As payroll taxes increase, firms...

This paper calculates accurate estimates of income and payroll taxes using a groundbreaking set of linked survey and administrative tax data that are part of the Comprehensive Income Dataset (CID). We compare our estimates to survey imputations produced by the Census Bureau and those generated...

Albania is preparing a Medium-Term Revenue Strategy (MTRS) to finance its development spending of an estimated 2.2-3.0 percent of GDP over five years. Revenue mobilization will be supported by comprehensive tax policy and administration reforms. International and regional comparisons suggest...

This paper estimates the effect of payroll tax cuts on firm-level employment and balance-sheet outcomes during economic downturns. We use two regional payroll tax cuts in Finland as well as the onset of the Great Recession to estimate the effect of the recession on firms treated by the payroll...

It is commonly argued that payroll tax cuts are inefficient for increasing employment among outsiders because insiders will use their power to bargain for higher wages at the expense of outsiders’ possibility of becoming employed. The extent to which insiders or outsiders reap the rewards of...

Even before the pandemic, an ageing population, a potential over-reliance on corporation tax receipts and an inevitable decline in motor tax revenues combined to make the need for future tax rises likely. This paper examines a range of options that a government seeking to raise or replace tax...

This paper quantifies the impacts of collecting system on social insurance contribution compliance, taking advantage of a reform around 2000 in China. Using firm-level data, we find that the actual contribution rate and the probability of participation were raised by 3% and 5 percentage points...

This paper examines the efficiency gains from linking marginal Social Security benefits to marginal Social Security payroll taxes. In the U.S. the current combined employer-employee OASI payroll tax rate is 10.4 percent. Recent estimates suggest that the average marginal income tax rate is...

This paper uses quasi-experimental variation in payroll tax rates in Finland to investigate how firms use their input factors. We find that higher payroll tax rates lead to large employment responses and have no effects on employee-level earnings. As payroll taxes increase, firms substitute away...

In an earlier paper we analyzed a method of combining traditional tax financed pay-as-you-go Social Security benefits with annuities financed by Personal Retirement Accounts. We showed that such a combination could maintain the level of retirement income projected in current Social Security law...

This paper considers both theoretical quest ions and empirical measures of the effects of various policies of income and payroll taxation on labor supply. It emphasizes deadweight loss as the correct criterion of taxation evaluation, rather than merely output effects. Distributional issues are...

This paper estimates the effect of payroll tax cuts on firm-level employment and balance-sheet outcomes during economic downturns. We use two regional payroll tax cuts in Finland as well as the onset of the Great Recession to estimate the effect of the recession on firms treated by the payroll...

We explore the causes of the dramatic rise in employee contributions to health insurance over the past two decades. In 1982, 44% of those who were covered by their employer-provided health insurance had their costs fully financed by their employer, but by 1998 this had fallen to 28%. We discuss...

Using the society-managed health insurance data, which is cross-sectional time-series and covers 1,670 health insurance societies for seven years (FY1995-2001), we found for the first time in Japan that the majority of the employer's contribution to health insurance is shifting back onto the...

Not sufficiently harmonised national pension systems within the European Union distort the allocation of labour and endanger redistributive activities. This paper identifies the most decentralised level of harmonisation which guarantees efficient allocation and enables redistribution. For this,...

In this paper we theoretically and empirically examine the common, but previously unexamined, case of a firm-varying tax which is used to finance a fringe benefit. While we use data from the experience-rated unemployment insurance (UI) system, it is important to realize that differential...

In this study the social security earnings test is shown to have a significant effect empirically on the labor supply of retirement aged men. A rich data file from the Social Security Administration containing accurate benefit information provides a cross- section sample of 65-70 year old...

Recent advances in the examination of efficiency gains from dynamic tax reforms have used simulation models to isolate intragenerational and/or intergenerational effects. Important considerations having to do with uncertainty or capital market imperfections are frequently missing from such a...

As currently legislated, the U.S. Social Security System represents a bad deal for postwar Americans. Of every dollar postwar Americans have earned or will earn over their lifetimes, over 5 cents will be lost to the Old Age Survivor Insurance System (OASI) in the form of payroll taxes paid in...

In 1954, the Internal Revenue Service stipulated that employer contributions to the health insurance plans of their employees were to be excluded from employee taxable income. Today, the tax subsidy is major feature of the U.S. health care market. This paper examines the initial effects of the...

Administrative data on the universe of employees, firms, and unemployment insurance (UI) recipients in Canada over an 11 year period are used to examine the operation of UI using the firm as the unit of analysis. Persistent transfers through UI are present at both industry and firm levels, and...

This paper outlines the methodology used by the OECD in its Taxing Wages publication, compares this approach to other measures of the effective tax rate on labour and uses recent results to illustrate its use. It argues that the strength of this methodology lies in its ability to make...