Tax Progression in OECD Countries : An Integrative Analysis of Tax Schedules and Income Distributions

This is the first book that performs international and intertemporal comparisons of uniform tax progression with empirical data. While conventional measures of tax progression suffer from serious disadvantages for empirical analyses, this book extends uniform measures to progression comparisons of countries with different income distributions. Tax progression is analyzed in terms of Lorenz curve and Suits curve equivalents of net incomes and taxes. The authors derive six distinct definitions of the relation "is more progressive than", which are then utilized for an empirical analysis of 13 countries included in the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). In two thirds of all international comparisons of tax progression, the authors report a clear ranking of the respective countries in terms of progression dominance. Tax based definitions of greater progressivity perform best. These observations are yet reinforced by statistical tests. The book also provides an account of the institutional background of the involved countries in order to facilitate the interpretation of the data. Moreover, the authors conduct intertemporal comparisons of tax progression for selected countries and perform a sensitivity analysis with respect to the parameterization of the equivalence scale. AiThis is the first book that performs international and intertemporal comparisons of uniform tax progression with empirical data. While conventional measures of tax progression suffer from serious disadvantages for empirical analyses, this book extends uniform measures to progression comparisons of countries with different income distributions. Tax progression is analyzed in terms of Lorenz curve and Suits curve equivalents of net incomes and taxes. The authors derive six distinct definitions of the relation "is more progressive than", which are then utilized for an empirical analysis of 13 countries included in the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). In two thirds of all international comparisons of tax progression, the authors report a clear ranking of the respective countries in terms of progression dominance. Tax based definitions of greater progressivity perform best. These observations are yet reinforced by statistical tests. The book also provides an account of the institutional background of the involved countries in order to facilitate the interpretation of the data. Moreover, the authors conduct intertemporal comparisons of tax progression for selected countries and perform a sensitivity analysis with respect to the parameterization of the equivalence scale Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction:Measuring Tax Progression....Pages 1-3 Front Matter....Pages 5-5 Local Measures....Pages 7-16 Global Measures....Pages 17-25 Uniform Measures....Pages 27-68 Front Matter....Pages 69-69 Data and Fiscal Institutions of the Surveyed Countries....Pages 71-151 Qualitative Results....Pages 153-194 Statistical Test Results....Pages 195-217 Quantitative Results....Pages 219-298 Conclusion....Pages 299-308 Back Matter....Pages 309-319 Christian Seidl, Kirill Pogorelskiy, Stefan Traub. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 309-315) And Index.