Documents Godar, Sarah 4 results

"In den letzten Jahrzehnten wurde in den meisten OECD-Ländern die Umverteilungswirkung des Steuersystems politisch gezielt erheblich geschwächt. Obwohl dieser Trend seit Kurzem gebremst worden ist, scheint ein umfassender Richtungswechsel nicht in Sicht. Ein zentrales Argument gegen einen solchen Wechsel ist der behauptete Zielkonflikt zwischen Verteilungsgerechtigkeit und Effizienz. Nach herrschender Ansicht ist eine stärkere Besteuerung von hohen Einkommen, Unternehmensgewinnen und Vermögen schädlich für Wachstum und Beschäftigung. Jedoch lassen selbst die dominierenden theoretischen Ansätze erhebliche Spielräume für eine progressivere Steuerpolitik. Aus einer keynesianischen makroökonomischen Perspektive kann Umverteilung sogar systematisch förderlich für Wachstum und Beschäftigung sein. Daher sollten neben Versuchen, die internationale Steuerkoordinierung und -harmonisierung voranzutreiben, die nationalen Steuerpolitiken aktiv ihre Handlungsspielräume für eine progressivere Besteuerung nutzen, um die Ungleichheiten in der Einkommensverteilung zu korrigieren und gleichzeitig den finanzpolitischen Spielraum zu erweitern."

"The trend of increasing inequality in the distribution of income and wealth in most developed countries has led to calls for corrective tax increases for the rich and wealthy. Such calls are often confronted with the claim that higher taxes on top personal incomes, corporate income and wealth are detrimental to growth and employment and/or will foster tax avoidance. This paper argues that even the dominating theoretical framework leaves substantial leeway for redistributive taxation. Furthermore, from a Keynesian macroeconomic perspective redistribution may even be systematically conducive to growth and employment. At the same time a change towards such a policy of redistribution may for some economies, particularly the German one, well be the prerequisite for compliance with the European Fiscal Compact if an increase of the macroeconomic imbalances that have come to be seen as a root cause of the global financial and economic crisis 2008/2009 and also the Euro crisis by many observers is to be avoided. Therefore, besides attempts at international tax coordination and harmonisation, national tax policies should actively use their room of manoeuvre for progressive taxation to correct the disparities in the income distribution and at the same time to increase the fiscal space."

"Budgetary pressures and the debate on increasing inequality caused by the global financial and economic crisis have also revived public and scholarly interest in tax policies. While some international coordination attempts aim at a more effective enforcement of existing tax laws, a number of individual country reforms have also changed the national tax structures in EU member states. The study provides a summary of tax policy trends in the EU and gives a rough overview of tax reforms in the areas of income and corporate taxes, wealth-related taxes and consumption taxes since the 1980s with an emphasis on new developments since 2008. In some aspects, recent tax policy choices deviate from the trends of the last decades which were characterized by declining top tax rates and tax privileges for capital income. Still, one cannot speak of a progressive turn of tax policy in the EU. The tax burden increased also for low and middle income groups, in some cases in the form of surcharges on the income tax, but in the majority of member states in the form of increased consumption taxes. Equity considerations might have played a role in recent reforms, and a contribution by high income groups might have been regarded as unavoidable. However, governments have refrained from substantial redistributive reforms, the more so as top tax rate increases were temporary in many cases whereas VAT increases were not."