127 (4) 2007

Bestimmung ökonomischer Einkommen und effektiver Einkommensteuerbelastungen mit der Faktisch Anonymisierten Lohn- und Einkommensteuerstatistik

Timm Bönke

Frank Neher

Carsten Schröder

For a representative sample of German taxpayers, atypical slopes of Engel curves imply fis-cal incomes to be a biased measure of taxpayers' abilities to consume. Yet, we show that, in general, the dataset provides sufficient information for converting taxpayers' fiscal incomes into economic, disposable incomes. For the economic income we define, Engel curves pos-sess the typical characteristics. We use economic incomes to study the progression of the German income-tax schedule which, effectively, turns out to be significantly less progressive than the income-tax tariff may suggest.

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