Who should bear the burden of COVID-19 related fiscal pressure? An optimal income taxation perspective

Mehmet Ayaz, Lea Fricke, Clemens Fuest and Dominik Sachs

European Economic Review, 2023, vol. 153, issue C

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.

Keywords: Fiscal pressure; Optimal taxation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H21 H23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Who Should Bear the Burden of Covid-19 Related Fiscal Pressure? An Optimal Income Taxation Perspective (2021)
Working Paper: Who Should Bear the Burden of Covid-19 Related Fiscal Pressure? An Optimal Income Taxation Perspective (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:153:y:2023:i:c:s0014292123000107

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2023.104381

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