Familienbesteuerung in Österreich und Deutschland: Eine vergleichende Analyse unter Berücksichtigung aktueller Steuerreformen

This paper compares the taxation of families with children in Austria and Germany with respect to the income situation of three representative example families. The first section deals with the legal background of family taxation an provides an analysis of the distributional effects of the Austrian family package, which is part of the income tax reform 2009. The results show that absolute savings due to the Austrian tax reform 2009 are higher, the more children and/or sources of income a family has. We show that the level of relative savings is the highest for single-parent families with a family income of 40.000 Euro and reaches nearly 15 percent of the family net income. We compare the taxation of Austrian and German families by measuring absolute savings due to the family packages as well as by calculating effective average tax rates for the example families. We show that the advantageousness of one country is primarily driven by the deductible amount of cost for childcare as well as the inclusion of Austrian supplemental wages (vacation and Christmas bonus). Not including the Austrian supplemental wages leaves German families better off, with the maximum advantage for German families accounting for about 6 percent. Including the Austrian beneficial taxation of supplemental wages instead favours Austrian families with the maximum advantage being about 8 percent. The results show that the Austrian system of separate taxation does not necessarily result in lower after tax incomes than the German system of joint assessment. In some cases it leaves Austrian families even better off. An adequate tax relief for families does not necessarily require elements of joint taxation; other tax measures can yield the same effect without accepting the disadvantages of joint assessment.