IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ese/emodwp/em20-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The fiscal and equity impact of social tax expenditures in the EU

Author

Listed:
  • Figari, Francesco
  • Riscado, Sara
  • Barrios, Salvador
  • Coda Moscarola, Flavia
  • Gandullia, Luca

Abstract

Tax expenditures are preferential tax treatments granted to specific individuals or categories of households which aim at achieving social and economic goals. They are widely used by EU Member States. However, their fiscal and equity impacts are not always clear and their effectiveness and efficiency as a policy instrument need to be carefully evaluated, especially in the present context of constrained public finances. This paper quantifies the fiscal and equity effects of social tax expenditures related to housing, education and health in 27 European countries making use of EUROMOD, the EU-wide microsimulation model. We find a variety of effects, in terms of sign and magnitude, across Member States, and within these, among types of households. Overall our findings suggest that the impact of tax expenditure on tax revenues and on income inequalities can be sizeable. The redistributive impact of removing tax expenditures can go both directions, either on the progressive or regressive side, depending on the country and the tax expenditure considered.

Suggested Citation

  • Figari, Francesco & Riscado, Sara & Barrios, Salvador & Coda Moscarola, Flavia & Gandullia, Luca, 2019. "The fiscal and equity impact of social tax expenditures in the EU," EUROMOD Working Papers EM20/19, EUROMOD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:ese:emodwp:em20-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/working-papers/euromod/em20-19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leonard E. Burman & Christopher Geissler & Eric J. Toder, 2008. "How Big Are Total Individual Income Tax Expenditures, and Who Benefits from Them?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 79-83, May.
    2. Willem Adema & Pauline Fron & Maxime Ladaique, 2014. "How much do OECD countries spend on social protection and how redistributive are their tax/benefit systems?," International Social Security Review, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 67(1), pages 1-25, January.
    3. Cinzia Di Novi & Anna Marenzi & Dino Rizzi, 2018. "Do healthcare tax credits help poor-health individuals on low incomes?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(2), pages 293-307, March.
    4. Miche l L. Collins & Mary Walsh, 2011. "Tax Expenditures: Revenue and Information Forgone - the experience of Ireland," Trinity Economics Papers tep1211, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    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. Christl, Michael & De Poli, Silvia & Ivaškaitė-Tamošiūnė, Viginta, 2021. "Does it pay to say "I do"? Marriage bonuses and penalties across the EU," GLO Discussion Paper Series 906, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    2. Marion del Sol & Pascale Turquet, 2021. "L’assurance maladie complémentaire des salariés au prisme du fiscal welfare… what’s going wrong in France ?," Post-Print hal-03411441, HAL.
    3. Maria O. Kakaulina & Nikita A. Kazansky, 2023. "The impact of tax expenditures on economic growth: The US experience," Journal of New Economy, Ural State University of Economics, vol. 24(4), pages 41-63, January.

    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. Salvador Barrios & Flavia Coda Moscarola & Francesco Figari & Luca Gandullia, 2020. "Size and distributional pattern of pension-related tax expenditures in European countries," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 27(5), pages 1287-1320, October.
    2. Salvador Barrios & Francesco Figari & Luca Gandullia & Sara Riscado, 2016. "The fiscal and equity impact of tax expenditures in the European Union," JRC Working Papers on Taxation & Structural Reforms 2016-01, Joint Research Centre.
    3. Bührer, Christian & Fetzer, Stefan & Hagist, Christian, 2020. "Adverse selection in the German Health Insurance System – the case of civil servants," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(8), pages 888-894.
    4. Antonelli Maria Alessandra & De Bonis Valeria, 2018. "Assessing the performance of social spending in Europe," Central European Journal of Public Policy, Sciendo, vol. 12(1), pages 17-31, June.
    5. Cinzia Di Novi & Anna Marenzi & Dino Rizzi, 2018. "Do healthcare tax credits help poor-health individuals on low incomes?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(2), pages 293-307, March.
    6. Netta Achdut & Lea Achdut, 2022. "Joint Income-Wealth Poverty in a Cross-National Perspective: The Role of Country-Level Indicators," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 499-541, November.
    7. Marenzi, Anna & Rizzi, Dino & Zanette, Michele, 2021. "Incentives for voluntary health insurance in a national health system: Evidence from Italy," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(6), pages 685-692.
    8. Joseph Teyu Chou & Chien-Hao Fu, 2022. "Which Families Benefited from the Recent Personal Income Tax Reform in Taiwan: Evidence from the Administrative Data," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 433-451, September.
    9. Plomien, Ania & Schwartz, Gregory, 2024. "Market-reach into social reproduction and transnational labour mobility in Europe," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119900, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Martin Feldstein, 2011. "Preventing a National Debt Explosion," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(1), pages 109-144.
    11. Galina A. Kitova, 2014. "Taxation Of R&D: Review Of Practices," HSE Working papers WP BRP 28/STI/2014, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    12. Leonard E. Burman & Marvin Phaup, 2011. "Tax Expenditures, the Size and Efficiency of Government, and Implications for Budget Reform," NBER Working Papers 17268, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Clément Carbonnier, 2023. "Welfare Economics and Neoliberalism: Interpreting the ideal type of perfect competition general equilibrium," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-04062786, HAL.
    14. Marè, M.; & Porcelli, F.; & Vidoli, F.;, 2024. "Does private supply drive personal health choices? A spatial approach of health tax detractions at municipal level," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 24/03, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    15. Isabelle Joumard & Mauro Pisu & Debra Bloch, 2012. "Less Income Inequality and More Growth – Are They Compatible? Part 3. Income Redistribution via Taxes and Transfers Across OECD Countries," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 926, OECD Publishing.
    16. Andrea Albarea & Michele Bernasconi & Cinzia Di Novi & Anna Marenzi & Dino Rizzi & Francesca Zantomio, 2015. "Accounting for Tax Evasion Profiles and Tax Expenditures in Microsimulation Modelling. The BETAMOD Model for Personal Income Taxes in Italy," International Journal of Microsimulation, International Microsimulation Association, vol. 8(3), pages 99-136.
    17. Popova, Daria, 2023. "Impact of equity in social protection spending on income poverty and inequality," Centre for Microsimulation and Policy Analysis Working Paper Series CEMPA10/23, Centre for Microsimulation and Policy Analysis at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    18. Leonard Burman, 2013. "Pathways to Tax Reform Revisted," Center for Policy Research Working Papers 155, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
    19. William G. Gale & Samuel Brown, 2013. "Tax Reform for Growth, Equity, and Revenue," Public Finance Review, , vol. 41(6), pages 721-754, November.
    20. Kay Blaufus & Frank Hechtner & Axel Möhlmann, 2017. "The Effect of Tax Preparation Expenses for Employees: Evidence from Germany," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(1), pages 525-554, March.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ese:emodwp:em20-19. 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: Jonathan Nears (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rcessuk.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.