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We investigate the relation between corporate tax payments and corporate social responsibility. Because existing theory and empirical studies find inconsistent evidence on the relation between these constructs, we investigate whether the two activities act as complements or substitutes. We estimate the relation between measures of corporate social responsibility and (1) the amount of corporate taxes paid, and (2) the amount invested in tax lobbying activities using both ordinary least squares and a system of simultaneous equations. We find consistent evidence that corporate social responsibility is negatively related to five-year cash effective tax rates and positively related to tax lobbying expenditures. Our evidence suggests that, on average, corporate social responsibility and tax payments act as substitutes.

Das Bundesverfassungsgericht legte mit seiner Entscheidung vom 25. September 1992 den Grundstein für einen verfassungsnahen Einkommensteuertarif. Der Grundfreibetrag, der das Existenzminimum vor dem Entzug durch Einkommensteuer verschonen soll, sollte realitätsnah bestimmt und der Einkommensteuertarif ausgewogen ohne Tarifsprünge gestaltet werden. Die Neuregelungen, die am 1. Januar 1996 in Kraft traten, sind im Jahr 2020 zum Teil wieder reformbedürftig. Dieter Dziadkowski unterbreitet Vorschläge zur verfassungsnahen Bestimmung des Grundfreibetrags.

Performance pay for tax collectors has the potential to raise revenues, but might come at a cost if it increases the bargaining power of tax collectors vis-à-vis taxpayers. We report the first large-scale field experiment on these issues, where we experimentally allocated 482 property tax units in Punjab, Pakistan, into one of three performance pay schemes or a control. After two years, incentivized units had 9.4 log points higher revenue than controls, which translates to a 46% higher growth rate. The scheme that rewarded purely on revenue did best, increasing revenue by 12.9 log points (64% higher growth rate), with little penalty for customer satisfaction and assessment accuracy compared to the two other schemes that explicitly also rewarded these dimensions. The revenue gains accrue from a small number of properties becoming taxed at their true value, which is substantially more than they had been taxed at previously. The majority of properties in incentivized areas in fact pay no more taxes, but instead report higher bribes. The results are consistent with a collusive setting in which performance pay increases collectors’ bargaining power over taxpayers, who have to either pay higher bribes to avoid being reassessed or pay substantially higher taxes if collusion breaks down.

Im Rahmen einer Querschnittsanalyse wird die Steuer- und Abgabenlast in Deutschland auf Haushaltsebene für 2018 untersucht. Neben der Belastung nach Haushaltseinkommen wird die Belastung nach der Konsumhöhe betrachtet. Schließlich wird der Beitrag unterschiedlicher Einkommensgruppen zur Staatsfinanzierung dargestellt. Es zeigt sich, dass die durchschnittliche Abgabenquote 40 % bei einem Bruttoeinkommen von 24.000 Euro beträgt. Bei einem Einkommen von 80.000 Euro steigt die Quote auf über 50 %. Using a cross-sectional analysis, this article investigates the burden of taxation and social security contributions across German households. The burden is determined with respect to household income as well as consumption level. Moreover, the different income groups' contributions to public finance are illustrated. It can be demonstrated that for gross incomes of 24,000 euros, the average tax and contribution ratio amounts to 40 %. For household incomes of 80,000 euros, the ratio rises above 50 %.

Low-income countries typically collect taxes of between 10 to 20 percent of GDP while the average for high-income countries is more like 40 percent. In order to understand taxation, economic development, and the relationships between them, we need to think about the forces that drive the development process. Poor countries are poor for certain reasons, and these reasons can also help to explain their weakness in raising tax revenue. We begin by laying out some basic relationships regarding how tax revenue as a share of GDP varies with per capita income and with the breadth of a country's tax base. We sketch a baseline model of what determines a country's tax revenue as a share of GDP. We then turn to our primary focus: why do developing countries tax so little? We begin with factors related to the economic structure of these economies. But we argue that there is also an important role for political factors, such as weak institutions, fragmented polities, and a lack of transparency due to weak news media. Moreover, sociological and cultural factors—such as a weak sense of national identity and a poor norm for compliance—may stifle the collection of tax revenue. In each case, we suggest the need for a dynamic approach that encompasses the two-way interactions between these political, social, and cultural factors and the economy.

We survey companies and find that many use incorrect tax rate inputs into important corporate decisions. Specifically, many companies use an average tax rate (the GAAP effective tax rate, ETR) to evaluate incremental decisions, rather than using the theoretically correct marginal tax rate. We find evidence consistent with behavioral biases (heuristics, salience) and managers' educational backgrounds affecting these choices. We estimate the economic consequences of using the theoretically incorrect tax rate and find that using the ETR for capital structure decisions leads to suboptimal leverage choices and using the ETR in investment decisions makes firms less responsive to investment opportunities.

This paper examines the effects of globalization on the distribution of worker-specific labor taxes using a unique set of tax calculators. We find a differential effect of higher trade and factor mobility on relative tax burdens in 1980–1993 versus 1994–2007 in the OECD. Prior to 1994, greater openness meant that higher income earners were taxed progressively more. However, after 1994, we document a globalization-induced rise in the labor income tax burden of the middle class, while the top 1 percent of workers and employees faced a reduction in their tax burden of 0.59–1.45 percentage points.

News—or foresight—about future economic fundamentals can create rational expectations equilibria with non-fundamental representations that pose substantial challenges to econometric efforts to recover the structural shocks to which economic agents react. Using tax policies as a leading example of foresight, simple theory makes transparent the economic behavior and information structures that generate non-fundamental equilibria. Econometric analyses that fail to model foresight will obtain biased estimates of output multipliers for taxes; biases are quantitatively important when two canonical theoretical models are taken as data generating processes. Both the nature of equilibria and the inferences about the effects of anticipated tax changes hinge critically on hypothesized information flows. Different methods for extracting or hypothesizing the information flows are discussed and shown to be alternative techniques for resolving a non-uniqueness problem endemic to moving average representations.

This paper models how to use widely available data on wages and housing costs to infer land rents, local productivity, and the total value of local amenities in the presence of federal taxes and locally produced nontraded goods. I apply the model to U.S. metropolitan areas with the aid of visually intuitive graphs. The results improve measures of productivity and feature large differences in land rents. Wage and housing cost differences across metropolitan areas are accounted for more by productivity than quality-of-life differences. Regressions using individual amenities reveal that the most productive and valuable cities are typically coastal, sunny, mild, educated, and large.

American visitors to Scandinavian countries are often puzzled by what they observe: despite large income redistribution through distortionary taxes and transfers, these are very high-income countries. They rank among the highest in the world in terms of income per capita, as well as most other economic and social outcomes. The economic and social success of Scandinavia poses important questions for economics and for those arguing against large redistribution based on its supposedly detrimental effect on economic growth and welfare. How can Scandinavian countries raise large amounts of tax revenue for redistribution and social insurance while maintaining some of the strongest economic outcomes in the world? Combining micro and macro evidence, this paper identifies three policies that can help explain this apparent anomaly: the coverage of third-party information reporting (ensuring a low level of tax evasion), the broadness of tax bases (ensuring a low level of tax avoidance), and the strong subsidization of goods that are complementary to working (ensuring a high level of labor force participation). The paper also presents descriptive evidence on a variety of social and cultural indicators that may help in explaining the economic and social success of Scandinavia.