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"Wealth tax"
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Taxing the rich : a history of fiscal fairness in the United States and Europe
\"Taxing the Rich draws on unparalleled evidence from twenty countries over the last two centuries to provide the broadest and most in-depth history of progressive taxation available. Scheve and Stasavage explore the intellectual and political debates surrounding the taxation of the wealthy while also providing the most detailed examination to date of when taxes have been levied against the rich and when they haven't. Fairness in debates about taxing the rich has depended on different views of what it means to treat people as equals and whether taxing the rich advances or undermines this norm. Scheve and Stasavage argue that governments don't tax the rich just because inequality is high or rising--they do it when people believe that such taxes compensate for the state unfairly privileging the wealthy. Progressive taxation saw its heyday in the twentieth century, when compensatory arguments for taxing the rich focused on unequal sacrifice in mass warfare. Today, as technology gives rise to wars of more limited mobilization, such arguments are no longer persuasive. Taxing the Rich shows how the future of tax reform will depend on whether political and economic conditions allow for new compensatory arguments to be made.\"--Publisher's Web site.
Book
What are the Barriers to Taxing Wealth? The Case of a Wealth Tax Proposal in the UK
Over the past decade there have been repeated calls for the greater taxation of wealth. These calls have had little impact on policy. There has been a global trend to reduce or abolish taxes on wealth. The contrast suggests that it may be better now to explore how taxes on wealth may be made a reality rather than designing new tax proposals. What are the barriers to tax wealth? This paper addresses this by conducting a case study of a high profile plan for introducing a one-off wealth tax in the UK. It identifies a tyranny of the status quo, framing and the policy process as key barriers to tax reform. It uses thematic analysis to study how the plans for a one-off wealth tax were discussed in the media and the UK Parliament. This paper argues that there were important shortfalls in both the way the case for a wealth tax was framed as well as the engagement with the policy process. It claims that a stronger framing would have discussed wealth inequality in greater depth and there was a need for a less equivocal case to Parliamentarians.
Journal Article
A METHODOLOGICAL PUZZLE: THE REPRESENTATIVENESS OF AFTER-DEATH INVENTORIES WITHOUT MONETARY VALUATIONS. THE CASE OF VIC (1400-1460)
[...]the study will assess the possibilities that alternative wealth indicators may offer to socially classify after-death inventories without monetary valuations in order to establish a solid methodological foundation essential for conducting a rigorous historical analysis of pre-industrial consumption patterns in Catalonia and, by extension, all the Crown of Aragon. Consumer demand is in itself a dynamic concept as it is constantly being reshaped according to the owner's wealth and ideas. [...]it cannot be studied using after-death inventories.5 In order to explore the dynamic perspective of consumption, one must turn to other historical sources, such as household budgets. [...]the findings based on the analysis of after-death inventories cannot be valid because they do not cover the same social groups across time.10 The recent studies of Jane Humphries, Jacob Weisdorf, and Benjamin Schneider on the annual earnings of English workers seem to have put an end to this debate. [...]their annual earnings were also much higher than previous studies had estimated on the basis of daily wages.11 Following Jan de Vries' argument, these authors have claimed that eighteenth-century households reallocated more time into their work, thus increasing their modest incomes and allowing them to gain the necessary cash with which to buy the new commodities listed in the probate inventories.12 Regardless of its outcome, this debate emphasizes the importance of understanding the socio-economic composition inherent in any inventory sample used for statistical purposes.
Journal Article
Mobility of top income taxpayers in response to regional differences in personal taxes: Evidence from Spain
The study empirically tests whether regional differences in personal taxes (Personal Income Tax, Wealth Tax, and Inheritance and Gift tax) have had some influence on the decision of the richest Spanish taxpayers to change their residence. The estimates use the Personal Income Tax (IRPF) Panel database provided by the Ministry of Public Finance. The study offers evidence that regional tax differences affect the decision to change residence of the top income taxpayers and also that this decision is also affected by other attractiveness and opportunity factors offered by the regions, and by certain characteristics of the individuals. However, the marginal effects are very slight, except for the coefficient of the variable showing regional differences in IRPF: If the difference between average regional IRPF rates increases by 10 percentage points in favour of the other regions, the probability of a top 1% taxpayer changing its residence increases by 11.2 percentage points. The study also documents the importance of the Community of Madrid in the relocation decisions of rich taxpayers. Finally, the study finds that the behaviour of taxpayers aged 65 years and over in the top 1% does not seem very different from that of all taxpayers in the same income bracket.
Journal Article
The Wealth Tax and the Tax Mix
This paper explores the potential role for a wealth tax as part of the mix of taxes applying to assets in the Canadian tax system. The existing system taxes assets in a variety of ways. Asset incomes, such as interest, dividends, capital gains, and profits, are taxed in the income tax system, albeit imperfectly. The value of assets is taxed by capital taxes on selective types of corporations and by the property tax on residential and non-residential property. Taxes applying to asset transfers include the deemed realization of capital gains on death as well as probate fees. There is neither a general tax on wealth nor a tax on wealth transferred through bequests. There are some glaring shortcomings of existing taxes on assets, such as the preferential treatment of capital gains, the exclusion of imputed returns, and the absence of a tax on inheritances. The authors argue that these deficiencies are best addressed by reforming the capital income tax system and introducing an inheritance tax rather than implementing an annual wealth tax.
Journal Article
Policy Forum: The Case for an Annual Net Wealth Tax
The public and policy makers are showing a renewed interest in wealth taxes as a possible response to the problem of wealth inequality. This article describes the recent trend of rising wealth inequality, and the factors contributing to it, in developed countries, including Canada. The authors argue that an annual wealth tax could and should counter the trend, and that such a tax is both justifiable on economic grounds and technically feasible. They assert that the taxation of capital income does not adequately address the largely tax-free accumulation of large fortunes, and that an annual wealth tax is preferable to property taxes, which exclude the taxation of financial assets and are levied on gross rather than net wealth. The article responds in detail to major criticisms of an annual tax on wealth, arguing that such a tax is needed to achieve a more equal distribution of wealth while raising additional revenues.
Journal Article
WEALTH TAXATION AND WEALTH ACCUMULATION
Using administrative wealth records from Denmark, we study the effects of wealth taxes on wealth accumulation. Denmark used to impose one of the world’s highest marginal tax rates on wealth, but this tax was greatly reduced starting in 1989 and later abolished. Due to the specific design of the wealth tax, the 1989 reform provides a compelling quasi-experiment for understanding behavioral responses among the wealthiest segments of the population. We find clear reduced-form effects of wealth taxes in the short and medium run, with larger effects on the very wealthy than on the moderately wealthy. We develop a simple life cycle model with utility of residual wealth (bequests) allowing us to interpret the evidence in terms of structural primitives. We calibrate the model to the quasi-experimental moments and simulate the model forward to estimate the long-run effect of wealth taxes on wealth accumulation. Our simulations show that the long-run elasticity of taxable wealth with respect to the net-of-tax return is sizable at the top of the distribution.
Journal Article
An Annual Wealth Tax: Pros and Cons
We explore the case for a wealth tax as part of the tax mix. Annual wealth taxes are roughly equivalent to capital income taxes on the assets to which they apply. Wealth taxes differ in purpose from inheritance taxes which are useful adjuncts to income taxes. We recount the arguments for taxing capital income, and for taxing inheritances regardless of whether capital income is taxed. We argue that if the desire to tax asset income and wealth transfers is appropriately addressed by capital income and inheritance taxation, the additional need for an annual wealth tax is minimal.
Journal Article
Policy Forum: Taxing Wealth Transfers in Canada Using an Accession Tax
Wealth transfer taxes have had a long history in Canada: the Rowell-Sirois report suggested federal administration; the Carter report emphasized the importance of including wealth transfers in income. Yet by the 1980s wealth transfer taxes had largely disappeared in Canada. This article makes the case for consideration of an accession tax, which taxes wealth transfers in the recipients' hands. An accession tax has significant administrative advantages over the annual wealth tax featured in current popular debates.
Journal Article
Estimating the Top Tail of the Wealth Distribution
This paper uses the Household Finance and Consumption Survey to construct new estimates of top wealth shares in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Finland and The Netherlands. It provides a methodology to address simultaneously non-response and underreporting in wealth surveys.
Journal Article