Who should bear the burden of COVID-19 related fiscal pressure? An optimal income taxation perspective
Journal
European Economic Review
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2023
Author(s)
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in public debt in most countries, and the Ukraine war is likely to have similar effects. This will increase fiscal pressure in the future. We study how the shape of the optimal nonlinear income tax schedule is affected by this increase. We calibrate the workhorse optimal income tax model to five European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. Applying an inverse-optimum approach to the pre COVID-19 economies we obtain the Pareto weights implicitly applied by the different countries. We then ask how the schedule of marginal and average tax rates should be optimally adjusted to the increase in fiscal pressure. For all countries, we find that the increase in fiscal pressure leads to a less progressive optimal tax schedule both in terms of marginal and average tax rates.
Language
English
Keywords
Fiscal pressure
Optimal taxation
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SEPS - Economic Policy
Refereed
Yes
Volume
153
Start page
104381
Subject(s)
Eprints ID
269719
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
open.access
Name
fiscal_pressure2.pdf
Size
1.17 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
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