Fidel Picos

European Commission | ec · Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Tax expenditures are tax relief measures targeted at some socially desirable activities or specific groups of taxpayers. This paper reviews issues related to tax expenditures in the EU and presents some stylised facts related to tax expenditures in personal income taxation (PIT), value-added taxation (VAT), and corporate taxation. Like spending pro...

Minimum income schemes aim at providing citizens with a minimum living standard. In some EU countries, their regulation and provision takes place at the subnational level. This is the case in Spain, where minimum income schemes are a heterogeneous and complex collection of regional benefits designed and implemented at the regional level, by the Aut...

This paper presents baseline results from the latest public version (I4.0+) of EUROMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the EU. We begin by briefly discussing the process of updating EUROMOD. We then present indicators for income inequality and at-risk-of-poverty using EUROMOD and discuss the main reasons for the differences between these...

This paper attempts the first systematic comparison of Greek inequality estimates derived from administrative data and household survey data from the Greek SILC survey. The administrative data we employ contain more than 650 thousand tax returns and carry the unique feature of including the full top 1 percent of Greek taxpayers. The aim of the pape...

Europeans are, on average, better educated and live healthier, longer and more prosperous lives today than at any point in the past. However, this view on average achievements obscures large disparities, both within and between European countries. The income of the richest 20 % of households in Europe is on average 5 times higher than that of the p...

The 2010 Economic Adjustment Programme initiated a period of strict international supervision with respect to tax policy in Greece. The country implemented a large-scale fiscal consolidation package, aiming to reduce its public deficit below 3% of GDP by 2016. Since the beginning of the crisis, the provisions of the 'Greek Programme' have been revi...

Abstract We analyse to what extent and how the tax burden should be shifted towards top income earners in order to reduce income inequality. Starting from Lambert and Aronson (1993) and Alvaredo (2011) decomposition by income groups, we prove that for three types of revenue-neutral linear personal income tax reforms (PIT) based on Pfähler (1984) th...

This paper assesses the distributional impact of a revenue-neutral shift from SSC to VAT in 12 EU—OECD countries. Using Household Budget Survey data, we simulate a 5-percentage-point SSC reduction funded by three alternative VAT reforms: an equal relative increase in all VAT rates, an increase in the standard VAT rate, and a shift to a uniform VAT...

We provide a generalization and adaptation of the decomposition methodology by Pfähler (Bull Econ Res 42:121–129, 1990) and Lambert (The distribution and redistribution of income, 1st edn, 1989, The distribution and redistribution of income, 3rd edn, 2001), designed to assess the redistributive effect of personal income taxation. In particular, we...

This paper analyses the performance of the Spanish Personal Income Tax (PIT) in terms of progressivity, redistribution and social welfare throughout the extended period of economic growth between 1999 and 2007. For each of the three PIT models applied in this period (Laws 40/1998, 46/2002 and 35/2006), the paper evaluates its contribution to progre...

The aim of this paper is to provide a generalization of the Pfähler (1990) and Lambert (1989, 2001) decomposition, which allows us to overcome some limitations of the original methodology. In particular, our proposal avoids the problem of sequentiality when the tax has several types of deductions or allowances, schedules or tax credits. In addition...

The new 1999-2007 Personal Income Tax Return Panel is an expanded panel that represents the Spanish population of taxpayers for that period. Its statistical design (large sample stratified by region, income level and main source of income, with minimum variance sampling that leads to income estimations with errors of less than 1700) guarantees very...

This paper investigates the merits of increasing work incentives for low-income workers by shifting part of the tax burden from social security contributions (SSC) to consumption taxes (specifically VAT) in 13 European OECD countries. Simulation results based on household budget survey microdata show that such reforms will increase work incentives...

In recent decades several lines of corporate income tax reform, such as ACE and CbIT, have been proposed to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of debt finance.This paper estimates the effects that the application of this type ofreforms would have in spain,using microsimulation techniques applied to the accounting database sAbI. The results sh...

In recent decades several lines of corporate income tax reform, such as ACE and CBIT, have been proposed to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of debt finance. This paper estimates the effects that the application of this type of reforms would have in Spain, using microsimulation techniques applied to the accounting database SABI. The results...

El objetivo principal de este trabajo es analizar cuál ha sido el comportamiento del IRPF español a lo largo de la extensa fase de crecimiento económico comprendida entre 1999 y 2007. En concreto, el trabajo estudia la evolución de la capacidad recaudatoria del impuesto así como en sus consecuencias redistributivas. Este análisis se extiende al cál...

This article mainly discusses whether the introduction or increase of tourism taxation should be addressed through specific or general indirect taxation. With this aim, the paper describes the concept of tourism taxes and presents the several reasons that back their use. The paper also offers some numerical exercises comparing the effects of specif...

In this chapter we describe and assess the Spanish experience with environmental taxes in the last several decades, and formulate several suggestions for future developments in this area of tax reform. We first deal with the theoretical and policy contexts for environmental taxes and the so-called green tax reforms, to proceed with an enumeration o...

Since the early nineties, microsimulation techniques have been frequently used on research in Public Economics in Spain, typically for measuring the effects of tax changes. For this purpose, one of the most frequently used data sources has been the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). Despite providing very rich information, this source suppl...

This paper analyses the foundations, possible applications and the effects of tourism taxation in Spain. The article begins with an analysis of the economic and environmental reasons for taxing tourism, which would seem to call for taxes based on the principle of benefit, for either revenue or corrective purposes. Subsequently, we describe the prax...

This paper deals with the main reasons to use energy-environmental taxes and with the available options to de-centralize them as a source of revenue and fiscal autonomy for regions. Moreover, the article describes the rich Spanish experience in this field, also contemplating specific applications of energy-environmental taxes by regional administra...

This paper analyses the foundations, possible applications and the effects of tourism taxation in Spain. The article begins with an analysis of the economic and environmental reasons for taxing tourism, which would seem to call for taxes based on the principle of benefit, for either revenue or corrective purposes. Then the praxis of tourism taxatio...

Since the early nineties, microsimulation techniques have been frequently used on research in Public Economics in Spain, typically for measuring the effects of tax changes. For this purpose, one of the most frequently used data sources has been the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). Despite providing very rich information, this source suppl...

En el presente trabajo se presentan los últimos avances realizados en el Instituto de Estudios Fiscales en materia de simulación de reformas fiscales, abordando las características principales tanto de la base de datos utilizada como de la herramienta informática creada para su tratamiento. En concreto, nos centraremos en las especificaciones y apl...

Entre 1987 y 1993 los países escandinavos llevaron a cabo importantes reformas de sus IRPF, pasando de modelos formalmente sintéticos a modelos duales que gravan progresivamente las rentas de trabajo y proporcionalmente las de capital. Pese a la innovación que supuso en su día la adopción de estos modelos, no ha tenido lugar desde entonces un debat...

. Los análisis teóricos de equidad realizados hasta ahora sobre del Modelo Dual de IRPF suponían que éste gravaba menos las rentas de capital que las del trabajo. Sin embargo, el nivel de gravamen de cada base dependerá en realidad de la interacción de un impuesto dual concreto con una población determinada. Partiendo de este enfoque alternativo, e...

Durante los años noventa se observa en España una utilización creciente de las técnicas de microsimulación en la investigación en Economía Pública. Una de las fuentes de datos más utilizadas en este campo es el Panel de Hogares Europeo (PHOGUE). Pese a presentar información de una gran riqueza, los datos de renta de capital que proporciona están in...

La reforma fiscal, objeto primordial de la política de países avanzanzados, experimentada durante los años 2000-2002 en países como: Alemania, Francia, Holanda, Irlanda, Italia y Portugal. Las cuatro tendencias dominantes: continuidad de los aplanamientos tarifarios, predominio de la competencia fiscal internacional, insercción de las reducciones t...

. El presente trabajo analiza los efectos de la reforma del IRPF que entrar� en vigor en el a�o 2007 en t�rminos de coste recaudatorio, progresividad y redistribuci�n. Con un coste recaudatorio reducido, de cara a preservar la financiaci�n de las pol�ticas de gasto, la reforma introduce mayor equidad en el tratamiento de las circunstancias personal...