IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/92985.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Die Entfernungspauschale als steuertheoretische Herausforderung

Author

Listed:
  • Homburg, Stefan

Abstract

In Germany, commuting expenses have been deductible from the income tax base for a long time. Germany’s grand coalition has now restricted this deduction. The article analyses whether or not this was justified from an economic point of view. It is shown that, in the long run, the tax treatment of commuting expenses has nothing to do with production efficiency. Commuting rather represents a form of household production. The overall conclusion is that the more restrictive tax treatment seems economically justifiable.

Suggested Citation

  • Homburg, Stefan, 2008. "Die Entfernungspauschale als steuertheoretische Herausforderung," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 45-53.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:92985
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/92985/1/Homburg2008Pauschale.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fujita,Masahisa, 1991. "Urban Economic Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521396455, January.
    2. Diamond, Peter A & Mirrlees, James A, 1971. "Optimal Taxation and Public Production: I--Production Efficiency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 8-27, March.
    3. Wrede, Matthias, 2001. "Should Commuting Expenses Be Tax Deductible? A Welfare Analysis," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 80-99, January.
    4. Wolfram Richter, 2006. "Efficiency effects of tax deductions for work-related expenses," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 13(6), pages 685-699, November.
    5. Pio Baake & Rainald Borck & Andreas L–ffler, 2004. "Complexity and Progressivity in Income Tax Design: Deductions for Work-Related Expenses," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 11(3), pages 299-312, May.
    6. Homburg, Stefan, 2010. "Allgemeine Steuerlehre: Kapitel 1. Grundbegriffe der Steuerlehre," EconStor Books, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 92547, March.
    7. Krause-Junk, Gerold, 1996. "Umstrittene Kilometerpauschale," Wirtschaftsdienst – Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftspolitik (1949 - 2007), ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 76(9), pages 461-463.
    8. Jonathan Baldry, 1998. "Income Tax Deductions for Work‐related Expenses: The Rationale Examined," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1), pages 45-57, March.
    9. Matthias Wrede, 2001. "Tax Deductibility of Commuting Expenses and Leisures: On the Tax Treatment of Time-Saving Expenditure," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 57(2), pages 216-224, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Homburg, Stefan, 2010. "Allgemeine Steuerlehre: Kapitel 1. Grundbegriffe der Steuerlehre," EconStor Books, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 92547, March.
    2. Claudia Wesselbaum-Neugebauer, 2009. "Berufsbedingte Mobilität - empirische Befunde für Deutschland," Schumpeter Discussion Papers sdp09009, Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library.
    3. Laaser, Claus-Friedrich & Rosenschon, Astrid, 2013. "Subventionen in Deutschland in den Jahren 2000 bis 2011/2012: Der Kieler Subventionsbericht," Kiel Discussion Papers 516/517, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wolfram Richter, 2006. "Efficiency effects of tax deductions for work-related expenses," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 13(6), pages 685-699, November.
    2. Voßmerbäumer, Jan & Wagner, Franz W., 2013. "Steuerwirkungen betrieblicher Entgeltpolitik," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 144, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    3. Tscharaktschiew, Stefan & Hirte, Georg, 2012. "Should subsidies to urban passenger transport be increased? A spatial CGE analysis for a German metropolitan area," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 285-309.
    4. Hirte, Georg & Tscharaktschiew, Stefan, 2013. "Income tax deduction of commuting expenses in an urban CGE study: The case of German cities," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 11-27.
    5. Matthias Wrede, 2009. "A Distortive Wage Tax and a Countervailing Commuting Subsidy," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 11(2), pages 297-310, April.
    6. Borck, Rainald & Wrede, Matthias, 2005. "Political economy of commuting subsidies," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 478-499, May.
    7. Wolfram F. Richter & Peter Bareis & Matthias Wrede & Martin Gasche, 2004. "Ist die Abschaffung der Entfernungspauschale ökonomisch sinnvoll?," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 57(05), pages 5-19, March.
    8. Hirte, Georg & Tscharaktschiew, Stefan, 2011. "Income tax deduction of commuting expenses and tax funding in an urban CGE study: the case of German cities," Dresden Discussion Paper Series in Economics 02/11, Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Economics.
    9. Wolfram F. Richter, 2007. "Taxing Human Capital Efficiently – The Double Dividend of Taxing Nonqualified Labour More Heavily Than Qualified Labour," Ruhr Economic Papers 0012, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    10. Homburg, Stefan, 2010. "Allgemeine Steuerlehre: Kapitel 1. Grundbegriffe der Steuerlehre," EconStor Books, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 92547, March.
    11. Zenou, Yves, 2011. "Search, migration, and urban land use: The case of transportation policies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 174-187, November.
    12. Heuermann, Daniel F. & Assmann, Franziska & vom Berge, Philipp & Freund, Florian, 2017. "The distributional effect of commuting subsidies - Evidence from geo-referenced data and a large-scale policy reform," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 11-24.
    13. Baumgart, Eike & Blaufus, Kay & Hechtner, Frank, 2023. "The tax treatment of commuting expenses and job-related mobility," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 280, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    14. Peter Schwarz, 2017. "Federalism and horizontal equity across Switzerland and Germany: a new rationale for a decentralized fiscal structure," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 97-116, June.
    15. Richter, Wolfram F., 2006. "Taxing Human Capital Efficiently: The Double Dividend of Taxing Non-Qualified Labour More Heavily Than Qualified Labour," IZA Discussion Papers 2328, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Rainald Borck & Jun Oshiro & Yasuhiro Sato, 2022. "Property tax competition: A quantitative assessment," CEPA Discussion Papers 52, Center for Economic Policy Analysis.
    17. Santos, Georgina & Behrendt, Hannah & Maconi, Laura & Shirvani, Tara & Teytelboym, Alexander, 2010. "Part I: Externalities and economic policies in road transport," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 2-45.
    18. Paetzold, Jörg, 2019. "Do commuting subsidies increase commuting distances? Evidence from a Regression Kink Design," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 136-147.
    19. De Borger, Bruno, 2009. "Commuting, congestion tolls and the structure of the labour market: Optimal congestion pricing in a wage bargaining model," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 434-448, July.
    20. Homburg, Stefan, 2000. "Perspektiven der internationalen Unternehmensbesteuerung," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 9-61.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Commuting expenses; Income tax;

    JEL classification:

    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:92985. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.