POSTPONING RETIREMENT AND SOCIAL SECURITY IN A TWO-SECTOR MODEL

Pay-as-you-go social security schemes in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries are facing solvency problems, as people are living longer and birth rates have declined. Postponing the full retirement age (FRA), when retirees are entitled to full pension, has been proposed as a solution. This effectively lowers the payroll tax rate since pension is paid only in the post-FRA period. In a two-period two-sector overlapping generations model, I show that this shift lowers savings (because a part of the expected old-age income is consumed in the first period), as employment increases. In the transition to the new steady state, capital is decumulated and the wage rate falls. Contrast this with a reduction of the payroll tax rate where the initial old suffer reduced consumption, but the young have higher post-tax income and this spurs capital accumulation.

El impuesto sobre nóminas en nuevo león: fundamento para una iniciativa de reforma a través de su análisis sustantivo / The payroll tax in nuevo león, méxico: basis for a reform initiative through its substantive analysis

En 2013, se incrementó en un 50% la tasa del impuesto sobre nóminas en Nuevo León, México. Esta reforma ocasionó descontentó en el sector empresarial debido a que el impuesto grava el gasto en nóminas y la carga impositiva recae directamente en el empleador. La discusión se genera debido a que existen otros aspectos no considerados que podrían promover el incremento de la recaudación sin afectar los costos de la nómina y derivado de esto, la generación de empleo. La presente investigación pretende fundamentar la posibilidad de disminuir la tasa del impuesto sin afectar la recaudación a través de otros mecanismos como el dictamen fiscal y la figura de retención para promover el cumplimiento fiscal. Para tal efecto, en el documento se presentan los antecedentes del impuesto, el esquema del mismo en Nuevo León, los resultados en su recaudación y fiscalización y la determinación del potencial recaudatorio en la entidad. Al final, se presenta una propuesta de reforma del impuesto.

Payroll taxation increases inequality at the top

In recent decades, inequality of household income has increased globally. A common trend is increased income inequality at the top of the distribution. The sources of this trend are a matter of debate. Increased demand for analytical and managerial skills is said to have strongly increased labor incomes at the top. Other scholars have indicated that structural conditions, such as financialization or favorable taxation, have benefited top-earning households. Here, we contribute to the latter line of reasoning. We show that payroll taxation reinforces income inequality at the top. Such taxation has large fiscal volume and redistributive power. However, our knowledge about the distributional consequences of payroll taxation as a tax scheme is remarkably thin. We claim that payroll taxes are central to understanding income inequality. Many countries, such as Germany and the US, restrict payroll taxes to a maximum amount, resulting in significant payroll tax-exempted incomes for high-earning households. Strongly growing top-labor incomes thus lead to increased payroll tax-exempted incomes for households at the upper parts of the distribution and, consequently, to higher income dispersion. We use Germany (1992–2017), a highly redistributive country, as a case study. Our empirical results suggest that: a) households increasingly profit from payroll-exempted labor incomes across the upper quarter; b) this benefit has increased over time; and c) increased amounts of payroll tax-exempted labor income explain up to 60% of income dispersion at the top of the distribution. We discuss the generalizability of our case study for other countries.

Using Payroll Tax Variation to Unpack the Black Box of Firm-Level Production

This paper uses quasi-experimental variation in payroll tax rates in Finland to investigate how firms use their input factors. We find that higher payroll tax rates lead to large employment responses and have no effects on employee-level earnings. As payroll taxes increase, firms substitute away from low-skilled, routine and manual workers. Higher firm-level payroll tax rates also slightly decrease the total output of firms. Our results imply that firm-level production and input factor choices are clearly affected by payroll taxes.