IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-02527014.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

1914-2014: one hundred years of income tax in France

Author

Listed:
  • Mathias André

    (IPP - Institut des politiques publiques)

  • Malka Guillot

    (IPP - Institut des politiques publiques)

Abstract

Since its establishment by the law of July 15th 1914, the French income tax (impôt sur le revenu) experienced many changes and sparked many debates. It relies on two funding principles: the declaratory dimension for all categories of income at the tax unit level and the progressivity of the tax schedule. The end of tax schedules differentiated by income types (impôt cédulaire) in 1949 and the creation of the family quotient gave the French income tax its contemporary form. From the after-war period to 1980, income tax receipts increased to reach 5.6% of GDP. Between 1914 and 1986, the top marginal tax rate generally exceeded 60%. After this period, the decreasing number of tax brackets, the fall of the marginal tax rates and the introduction of "tax reductions" led to the decrease of income tax receipts as a share of GDP. This decline did not go in hand with a decrease of the overall tax burden in France but was rather compensated by the increase of other taxes, such as the "generalized social contribution", another income tax, introduced in 1991 with a larger tax base and flat rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Mathias André & Malka Guillot, 2014. "1914-2014: one hundred years of income tax in France," Post-Print halshs-02527014, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-02527014
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02527014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02527014/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Camille Landais & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Pour une révolution fiscale : un impôt sur le revenu pour le XXIe siècle," Post-Print halshs-00754907, HAL.
    2. Facundo Alvaredo & Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2013. "The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 3-20, Summer.
    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. Felix Bierbrauer & Pierre C Boyer & Andrew Lonsdale & Andreas Peichl, 2021. "Tax Reforms and Political Feasibility," Post-Print halshs-03364050, HAL.

    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. Bertrand Garbinti & Jonathan Goupille-Lebret & Thomas Piketty, 2016. "Accounting for Wealth Inequality Dynamics: Methods, Estimates and Simulations for France (1800-2014)," PSE Working Papers halshs-02794339, HAL.
    2. Ghosh, sudeshna, 2017. "Education Attainment Forecasting and Economic Inequality United States," MPRA Paper 89712, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. European Commission, 2013. "Tax reforms in EU Member States - Tax policy challenges for economic growth and fiscal sustainability – 2013 Report," Taxation Papers 38, Directorate General Taxation and Customs Union, European Commission.
    4. Bartels, Charlotte & Jäger, Simon & Obergruber, Natalie, 2020. "Long-Term Effects of Equal Sharing: Evidence from Inheritance Rules for Land," IZA Discussion Papers 13665, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Anna & Leonardo Weller, 2018. "Was Cold War A Constraint To Income Inequality?," Anais do XLIV Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 44th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 94, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    6. Vincenzo Carrieri & Francesco Principe & Michele Raitano, 2018. "What makes you ‘super-rich’? New evidence from an analysis of football players’ wages," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(4), pages 950-973.
    7. Cha, Myung Soo, "undated". "Living Standards, Inequality, and Human Development since 1870 : a Review of Evidence," IFCS - Working Papers in Economic History.WH 28438, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Instituto Figuerola.
    8. Björn Bartling & Vanessa Valero & Roberto A. Weber, 2018. "Is Social Responsibility a Normal Good?," CESifo Working Paper Series 7263, CESifo.
    9. Hasan, Iftekhar & Horvath, Roman & Mares, Jan, 2020. "Finance and wealth inequality," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    10. Lars Osberg, 2014. "What’s So Bad About More Inequality?," Working Papers daleconwp2014-01, Dalhousie University, Department of Economics.
    11. An, Li & Lou, Dong & Shi, Donghui, 2022. "Wealth redistribution in bubbles and crashes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 134-153.
    12. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/6o65lgig8d0qcro9oj599gl90 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Guillaume Allegre & Hélène Périvier & Muriel Pucci Porte, 2019. "Imposition des couples en France et statut marital : simulation de trois réformes du quotient familial," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03403189, HAL.
    14. Yuri Biondi & Simone Righi, 2019. "Inequality, mobility and the financial accumulation process: a computational economic analysis," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(1), pages 93-119, March.
    15. Seth D. Zimmerman, 2019. "Elite Colleges and Upward Mobility to Top Jobs and Top Incomes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(1), pages 1-47, January.
    16. Ayse Imrohoroglu & Cagri S. Kumru & Arm Nakornthab, 2018. "Revisiting Tax on Top Income," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2018-660, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    17. Pasquale Tridico, 2015. "The Rise Of Income Inequality In Oecd Countries," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0201, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
    18. Jaewoo Cho & Jae Hong Kim & Yonsu Kim, 2019. "Metropolitan governance structure and growth–inequality dynamics in the United States," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(3), pages 598-616, May.
    19. Cabral, René & García-Díaz, Rocío & Mollick, André Varella, 2016. "Does globalization affect top income inequality?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 916-940.
    20. Andrew G. Berg & Jonathan D. Ostry, 2017. "Inequality and Unsustainable Growth: Two Sides of the Same Coin?," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 65(4), pages 792-815, November.
    21. Alvaredo, Facundo & Cogneau, Denis & Piketty, Thomas, 2021. "Income inequality under colonial rule. Evidence from French Algeria, Cameroon, Tunisia, and Vietnam and comparisons with British colonies 1920–1960," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).

    More about this item

    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:hal:journl:halshs-02527014. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.