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...

Despite this phenomenal success and the Biden administration’s strong support, a divided Congress narrowly failed to extend these enhancements to 2022. The adverse impact was immediate. The January 2022 monthly child poverty rate increased by more than 40 percent to 17 percent in January 2022,...

The Innovation tax credit (crédit d’impôt innovation, CII) is an extension of the Research tax credit (crédit d’impôt recherche, CIR) intended to boost the incentive effect of the latter on SMEs to encourage them to engage in the creation of new products via the development of prototypes...

In a series of online experiments, we examine whether increasing the incentives to save by reducing the income tax rate on pensions results in higher savings. Our findings show that reducing the income tax rate on pensions has almost no significant effect on savings behavior. However, if we vary...

This Article examines the tax law’s subsidies for inequality and segregation in primary and secondary education, analyzing the federal charitable deduction and education savings plans, and state tax credits for education. It argues that the tax system diverts funds from traditional public...

Based on a unique dataset of carbon emissions in China’s 2527 counties during 2008-2019 and 1.5 million firms’ energy use from National Tax Survey Dataset, we take advantage of the two rounds of accelerated depreciation policy for fixed assets in 2014 and 2015 in China as natural experiments...

Brain drain is a growing concern for many countries experiencing large emigration rates of their highly educated citizens. While several European countries have designed preferential tax schemes to attract high-skilled individuals, there is limited empirical evidence on the effectiveness of...

Private pension saving among the self-employed population in the UK has been falling dramatically over the last few decades, and this has led to a heightened policy focus on how to boost pension saving among this group. In this report we analyse patterns of private pension saving among the...

The number of self-employed workers has been rising rapidly in the UK in recent decades. At the same time, private pension participation among this group has fallen sharply, leading to increasing concern among policymakers about the preparedness for retirement of self-employed workers. This...

This study selects typical tax incentive policies in China and conducts regression analysis on panel data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2019 to gain a better understanding of the combined effect of tax incentives on enterprise technological innovation. We find...

This paper characterizes efficient tax subsidies for charitable contributions, and considers the properties of potential reforms. Contributions are underprovided in the absence of subsidies, and are misdirected if subsidies fail to account for all of the costs that donors incur. It is costly for...

Brain drain is a growing concern for many countries experiencing large emigration rates of their highly educated citizens. While several European countries have designed preferential tax schemes to attract high-skilled individuals, there is limited empirical evidence on the effectiveness of...

The Global Tax Expenditures Database (https://GTED.net/) collects national reports on tax expenditures for 101 countries for the period from 1990 to the present. Based on these data, the development of tax expenditures in the 38 OECD countries between 1999 and today is examined. A look at the...

Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) setting that leverages the staggered adoption of R&D tax credits across the U.S. states, we show that after a firm receives the tax credits, products of its peers become significantly more similar to the recipient firm. Such product convergence is...

The (Callaghan) Retirement Income Review suggested that superannuation tax concessions are excessive, especially for those on higher incomes, and questioned their use other than to fund the superannuant’s living expenses. Favourable fiscal arrangements for superannuation are pervasive across...

I study how charitable contributions reported by nonprofit entities respond to variation in the federal and state estate tax rate. I focus on the asymmetric response by nonprofit vehicle type to changes in federal and state estate tax policy in the US since 2000, distinguishing between private...

This paper evaluates two hypothetical budget-neutral reforms that shift resources from family tax expenditures to family cash transfers. We evaluate these reforms using a structural labor supply model based on the microsimulation EUROMOD model and EUSILC data. We find that both reforms have an...

Public Benevolent Institutions (PBIs) are a class of charity which are entitled to access a Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) Concession. We explore the history of this concession and how it has evolved since its introduction. The paper also identifies barriers which inhibit access to the FBT Concession...

Rewards that consumers receive on credit card payments influence their payment choice. They are not taxed but merchants deduct card fees from their taxes. This article analyzes the tax effects in a model where card companies set interchange fees, consumers choose their preferred payment method,...

This paper characterizes efficient tax subsidies for charitable contributions, and considers the properties of potential reforms. Contributions are underprovided in the absence of subsidies, and are misdirected if subsidies fail to account for all of the costs that donors incur. It is costly for...

Brain drain is a growing concern for many countries experiencing large emigration rates of their highly educated citizens. While several European countries have designed preferential tax schemes to attract high-skilled individuals, there is limited empirical evidence on the effectiveness of...

We study the causal effects of household tax credits on the willingness to demand legally provided services using two survey experiments with 1.974 German homeowners. Participants choose between hypothetical offers of service providers and are randomly assigned to a policy scenario 1) without a...

Environmental policies are often accompanied by exemptions for energy-intensive and trade-exposed industrial firms to avoid leakage from regulated to unregulated jurisdictions. This paper investigates the impact of a large electricity tax exemption on production levels, employment, and input...

Purpose - This paper evaluates the effects of tax incentives on business innovation in Brazil that were established by Law 11,196/05 (the "Fiscal Incentives Law") to test whether they have had a positive impact on beneficiary firms' innovation input and output and on their performance....

We propose a novel mechanism through which established firms contribute to the startup ecosystem: the allocation of R&D tax credits to startups via the M&A channel. We show that when established firms become eligible for R&D tax credits, they increase their R&D and M&A activity. In particular,...

We examine the impact of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) on fertility and parental investment in children. The CDCTC aims to support working parents but its availability only to families with children incentivizing having more children or increasing investment in existing ones....

We examine disparities in Child Tax Credit (CTC) eligibility and anti-poverty effects since 1998 by family type. Initially, single mothers were least likely to be eligible and were underrepresented among those lifted from poverty by the CTC, because the credit was virtually nonrefundable. By...

Mental health conditions have worsened in many countries in recent decades. The provision of unconditional cash transfers may be one effective policy strategy for improving mental health, but causal evidence on their efficacy is rare in high-income countries. This study investigates the mental...

Research and Development (R&D) is crucial to secure continued economic growth and prosperity. Private sector investments in R&D are typically too low, which constitutes a market failure. Governments use R&D tax credit schemes to compensate for this failure. Input-based tax credit schemes and...

The R&D policy instrument mix concept has become increasingly important for understanding how public R&D support drives firm-level R&D. To-date, empirical studies have conceptualised the instrument mix as a static unit, whereby firms receive multiple policy instruments at one point in time....

We use Chinese firm-level data from 2001 to 2007 to estimate the (dis)connection between firms’ R&D and productivity and find that the productivity effect of R&D investment is very low. We conjecture that firms conduct/report unproductive R&D in order to obtain policy benefits. To explore this...