Personal Income Tax Progressivity: Trends and Implications

IMF Working Papers, November 20, 2018

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Personal Income Tax Progressivity: Trends and Implications

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Bibliographic details

• Authors: Claudia Gerber, Alexander D Klemm, Li Liu, Victor Mylonas
• Published: November 20, 2018
• Series: IMF Working Papers
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781484383087.001

Research focus and methodology

• Proposes a measure of progressive capacity of tax systems, based on the Kakwani index, but independent of pre-tax income distributions.
• Uses this measure and other progressivity measures to analyze tax-system structure and progressivity.

Key findings

• Documents a decline in progressivity over the last decades.
• Regression analysis does not reveal a significant impact of progressivity on economic growth.
• Interpretation offered: efficiency costs of progressivity may be small—at least for degrees of progressivity observed in the sample.

Subjects and keywords

• Subjects: Income distribution, National accounts, Personal income, Personal income tax, Progressive taxation, Social security contributions, Tax policy, Taxes
• Keywords: avg. wage, avg. waget-5, Global, Growth, income, income category, Income distribution, income taxation, Inequality, labor income, OECD tax database data, Personal income, Personal Income Tax, progressive tax system, Progressive taxation, Progressivity, Social security contributions, tax rate, Tax Wedge, WP

Content in this bundle

• Income Tax Progressivity: Trends and Implications, WP/18/246, November 2018
  • Income Tax Progressivity: Trends and Implications, WP/18/246, November 2018 (Markdown version)
  • Income Tax Progressivity: Trends and Implications, WP/18/246, November 2018 (PDF)