Working-Class Power and the Taxation of Current Earnings: Danish Pay-As-You-Earn Income Tax in Comparative Perspective

Isaac W. Martin ()
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Isaac W. Martin: University of California

A chapter in Worlds of Taxation, 2018, pp 73-97 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Pay-as-you-earn taxation (PAYE) enlists the assistance of employers in assessing the provisional income tax liability and withholding it from paychecks of a majority of the labor force even before the income year is up. PAYE is one of the most important tools of macroeconomic governance in twenty-first-century capitalist states. A historical case study of Denmark, with comparisons to other states, provides evidence that working-class political power was the sufficient condition for the adoption of PAYE. Workers and their representatives favored PAYE as part of a fiscal bargain. Taxation in modern, democratic states should be conceptualized not as predation, but as part of a social contract in which citizens contribute in exchange for protection from the risks of market society.

Keywords: Denmark; Norway; Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE); Tax-at-source election (kildeskattevalget); Working-class power; Income tax (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:psitcp:978-3-319-90263-0_4

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90263-0_4

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