EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Role of Capital Income for Top Incomes Shares in Germany

Charlotte Bartels and Katharina Jenderny

No 201501, Working Papers from World Inequality Lab

Abstract: A large literature has documented top income share series based on income tax statistics using the common methodology established by Piketty (2001,2003). The widespread disappearance of capital income from the income tax base poses a major challenge to the comparability of these series both over time and between countries. In Germany, capital income was gradually excluded from the income tax base between 2001 and 2009. Using a rich data set containing all income taxpayers’ files we provide a homogeneous top income share series including full capital incomes from 2001 to 2010. Missing capital income since 2009 is extrapolated using a composite measure of stock dividends and interest income tax flows. We find that up to the top percentile the drop displayed in the German raw-data series in 2009 is largely attributable to the disappearance of capital income from the income tax base and not to the crisis. However, the very top of the income distribution is disproportionately hit by the crisis.

Date: 2015-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://wid.world/document/wid_working_paper_2015_1_germany/ (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Role of Capital Income for Top Incomes Shares in Germany (2015) Downloads
Working Paper: The Role of Capital Income for Top Incomes Shares in Germany (2015) Downloads
Working Paper: The role of capital income for top incomes shares in Germany (2014) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wel:wpaper:201501

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from World Inequality Lab Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucas Chancel ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-22
Handle: RePEc:wel:wpaper:201501