Adapting Income Taxation to the Labor Market Changes

The article is concerned with the analysis of the labor market changes, requiring the personal income tax reform. Methods of comparative and statistical analysis are applied. Rating and analytical agencies data, statistics from the OECD, Eurofond and Eurostat used as the empirical base of the study. Three labor market trends requiring appropriate changes in taxation were identified. The first trend is the change in the demand for work skills, which requires a more flexible approach to educational tax deductions and tax incentives for training in high-demand digital professions. The second trend is digital platforms and the gig economy that enhance income differentiation, which inevitably raises the question of progressive income taxation. The third trend is an increase in non-standard employment. The article analyzes such forms of non-standard employment as work on the basis of vouchers, platform work, joint employment, casual labour which are associated with the ambiguous status of employment and require changes in tax policy to regulate them.

PROGRESSIVE TAXATION AND MACROECONOMICS (IN)STABILITY UNDER HOUSEHOLD HETEROGENEITY

It has been shown that progressive income taxation may stabilize an otherwise standard representative-agent real business cycle model with an indeterminate steady state against aggregate fluctuations caused by agents’ animal spirits. By contrast, within an identical model that allows for sustained economic growth, progressive taxation could lead to equilibrium indeterminacy and sunspot-driven fluctuations. In the context of household heterogeneity that gives rise to income and asset inequality, the fiscal authority has (at least) two options of setting the baseline level of taxable income: (i) the economy-wide average level of income and (ii) the economy’s steady-state level of per capita income. I show that the adoption of a fiscal rule (i) invalidates the effects that a progressive tax can exert on the model’s local stability properties. Progressive income taxation thus no longer operates as an automatic stabilizer that mitigates belief-driven cyclical fluctuations in a no-growth economy, nor as an automatic destabilizer that leads to local indeterminacy in a sustained-growth economy. If a tax policy rule (ii) is instead adopted, then the existing literature’s findings of the (de)stabilizing roles of progressive taxation are robust to the inclusion of household heterogeneity.

Does Household Tax Burden Have an Impact on Individuals’ Savings in Banks? The Case of Ukraine

This paper aims to assess the impact of the effective and nominal household tax burden on household deposits in Ukrainian banks. We used the effective tax burden, which includes personal income taxes and value-added tax (VAT) paid. We considered changes in Ukrainian tax law from 2003 to 2016, which included a change from progressive income taxation to proportional income taxation, a decrease in tax rates in 2003, and an increase in tax rates in 2014–2016. The data sample consists of publicly available data on Ukrainian households’ income, savings, and taxes paid in 1996–2019. The analysis was performed using panel regression and the difference-in-difference (DID) method. The tax burden impact on bank deposits is significant and is caused partly by the shadow economy. The results of the study are relevant for Ukraine and countries with similar economies. The methodological approaches developed in the paper can be used for similar studies in other developing countries.

PROGRESSIVE INCOME TAXATION: FOREIGN EXPERIENCE AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT IN RUSSIA

The relevance of the research topic is due to the fact that in 2021 there was an important change in wages-the introduction of a progressive personal income tax rate. This system of income taxation is just be-ginning to be implemented and, of course, will be subject to further changes. The state has an important task to carry out this process consistently, taking into account the peculiarities of the country and relying on the successful experience of developed countries. The article reveals the concepts of progressive and propor-tional taxation, considers the views of supporters of these types of taxation systems, examines foreign expe-rience in applying the progressive personal income tax rate, and makes suggestions for improving the existing system.

Consumption Insurance against Wage Risk: Family Labor Supply and Optimal Progressive Income Taxation

We show that a calibrated life cycle two-earner household model with endogenous labor supply can rationalize the extent of consumption insurance against shocks to male and female wages, as estimated empirically by Blundell, Pistaferri, and Saporta-Eksten (2016) in US data. In the model, 35 percent of male and 18 percent of female permanent wage shocks pass through to consumption, compared to the empirical estimates of 32 percent and 19 percent. Most of the consumption insurance against permanent male wage shocks is provided through the presence and labor supply response of the female earner. Abstracting from this private intrahousehold income insurance mechanism strongly biases upward the welfare losses from idiosyncratic wage risk as well as the desired extent of public insurance through progressive income taxation. Relative to the standard one-earner life cycle model, the optimal degree of tax progressivity is significantly lower and the welfare gains from implementing the optimal system are cut roughly in half. (JEL D15, H21, H24, J16, J22, J31)

Financial Frictions and Firm Informality

In this paper we build a model of occupational choice with informal production and progressive income taxation. We calibrate the model to the Brazilian economy to evaluate the impact of removing financial frictions on informality. We find that financial deepening leads to a drop in the size of the informal sector (from 37 percent to 22 percent of official GDP), to an increase in measured TFP (by 4 percent), to an increase in official GDP (by 27 percent), to a decrease in tax evasion (by 17 percent) and to an increase in fiscal revenues (by 15 percent). When assessing the response of this policy at different levels of financial development, we find a non-linear relationship between the credit-to-GDP ratio on the one hand, and either the size of the informal economy, or GDP per capita on the other hand. We test these features with cross-country data and find evidence in favor of both types of non-linearity. We also investigate changes in the income tax progressitivity as an alternative policy and find it to be more effective in countries with a medium to high level of financial markets development.

PROSPECTS FOR PROGRESSIVE INCOME TAXATION IN RUSSIA

The subject of the study is the analysis of current income taxation and assessment of the prospects for the introduction of a progressive tax scale in the Russian Federation. The main purpose of the work is to identify the reserves of the Russian income tax system in order to replenish budget revenues in the fight against coronavirus infection. When performing the research, a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches and the method of financial analysis used. The new progressive system of income taxation analyzed from the point of view of the postulates of classical 222 Экономические системы. 2020. № 4 Economic Systems. 2020. No. 4 economic theory. Official statistics in the field of calculating nominal and real average monthly wages of employees in Russia as a whole by its subjects have been studied and summarized. The analysis of the current and new progressive income taxation introduced in Russia from January 1, 2021 performed. On a practical example, the mechanism for collecting income tax using flat and progressive scales considered, and the approximate revenue received from one taxpayer is calculated. The disadvantages of the newly introduced tax measure identified and generalized a narrow tax base, a low maximum rate, and the preservation of taxation of low-income segments of the population. The introduced system of progressive income taxation does not provide incentive levers, such as amounts of non-taxable income (in addition to the standard deductions mentioned above), and does not contain tax breaks on invested income. Based on the analysis of a representative body of scientific literature on the problem of improving the efficiency of income taxation, some possible solutions proposed. The proposals formulated in the article used to improve the system of income taxation in the future to increase its effectiveness, strengthen social orientation, and the predominance of the incentive function over the fiscal one.