IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_5660.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Should Pensions be Taxed? Theoretical Considerations and the Scandinavian Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Torben M. Andersen

Abstract

How should pensions be taxed? In many cases pension savings are usually taxed more leniently than other forms of savings. What is the rationale for this? And are those concerns best targeted via taxation or mandatory pension savings? These issues are discussed with outset in the experience of the Scandinavian countries (Denmark and Sweden). These countries are also interesting because they have implemented a dual income taxation scheme; i.e. they pursue an ETT-taxation regime vis a vis pensions. It is argued that the incentive structure related to pension savings and retirement can not be seen independently from how private pensions (and savings more generally) affect public pensions via meanstesting. The effective rates of taxation may thus differ significantly from the nominal rates. For Denmark and Sweden it is shown that the effective tax rates on pension savings can be rather high, and for low/medium income close to 100%.

Suggested Citation

  • Torben M. Andersen, 2015. "How Should Pensions be Taxed? Theoretical Considerations and the Scandinavian Experience," CESifo Working Paper Series 5660, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_5660
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp5660.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cremer, Helmuth & Pestieau, Pierre, 2011. "Myopia, redistribution and pensions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 165-175, February.
    2. Diamond, Peter, 2010. "Taxes and Pensions," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 6, pages 59-74.
    3. Iris Claus & Norman Gemmell & Michelle Harding & David White (ed.), 2010. "Tax Reform in Open Economies," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13704.
    4. Pierre Pestieau & Uri Possen, 2008. "Prodigality And Myopia—Two Rationales For Social Security," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 76(6), pages 629-652, December.
    5. Torben Andersen & Joydeep Bhattacharya, 2011. "On myopia as rationale for social security," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 47(1), pages 135-158, May.
    6. Palmer, Edward, 2000. "The Swedish pension reform model : framework and issues," Social Protection Discussion Papers and Notes 23086, The World Bank.
    7. A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), 2002. "Handbook of Public Economics," Handbook of Public Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 4, number 4.
    8. Diamond, Peter & Koszegi, Botond, 2003. "Quasi-hyperbolic discounting and retirement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(9-10), pages 1839-1872, September.
    9. Martin Feldstein, 1985. "The Optimal Level of Social Security Benefits," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(2), pages 303-320.
    10. Vincent P. Crawford & David M. Lilien, 1981. "Social Security and the Retirement Decision," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 96(3), pages 505-529.
    11. OECD & Inter-American Development Bank & World Bank Group, 2014. "Pensions at a Glance : Latin America and the Caribbean," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 21426, December.
    12. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Søren Leth-Petersen & Torben Heien Nielsen & Tore Olsen, 2014. "Active vs. Passive Decisions and Crowd-Out in Retirement Savings Accounts: Evidence from Denmark," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(3), pages 1141-1219.
    13. Peter Diamond, 2009. "Taxes and Pensions," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 76(1), pages 2-15, July.
    14. Pier-André Bouchard St-Amant & Jean-Denis Garon, 2015. "Optimal redistributive pensions and the cost of self-control," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 22(5), pages 723-740, October.
    15. Arnberg, S�ren & Barslund, Mikkel, 2014. "The Crowding-out Effect of Mandatory Labour Market Pension Schemes on Private Savings: Evidence from renters in Denmark," CEPS Papers 8911, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    16. A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), 2002. "Handbook of Public Economics," Handbook of Public Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    17. Findley, T. Scott & Caliendo, Frank N., 2015. "Time inconsistency and retirement choice," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 4-8.
    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. Mikkel Barslund, 2020. "Pension Systems in the EU — Some Policy Issues," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 55(2), pages 69-72, March.

    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. Torben M. Andersen & Joydeep Bhattacharya, 2021. "Why mandate young borrowers to contribute to their retirement accounts?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(1), pages 115-149, February.
    2. Andersen, Torben M. & Bhattacharya, Joydeep & Gestsson, Marias H., 2021. "Pareto-improving transition to fully funded pensions under myopia," Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(2), pages 169-212, June.
    3. Helmuth Cremer & Philippe Donder & Dario Maldonado & Pierre Pestieau, 2008. "Designing a linear pension scheme with forced savings and wage heterogeneity," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 15(5), pages 547-562, October.
    4. Spencer Bastani & Sören Blomquist & Luca Micheletto, 2016. "Public Pensions in a Multi-Period Mirrleesian Income Tax Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 6206, CESifo.
    5. Louis Kaplow, 2014. "Government Policy and Labor Supply with Myopic or Targeted Savings Decisions," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 29, pages 159-193, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Torben M. Andersen & Joydeep Bhattacharya & Qing Liu, 2020. "Reference-Dependent Preferences, Time Inconsistency, and Unfunded Pensions," CESifo Working Paper Series 8260, CESifo.
    7. Erin Cottle Hunt & Frank N. Caliendo, 2022. "Social security and risk sharing: A survey of four decades of economic analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(5), pages 1591-1609, December.
    8. Pierre Pestieau & Uri Possen, 2008. "Prodigality And Myopia—Two Rationales For Social Security," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 76(6), pages 629-652, December.
    9. Torben M. Andersen & Joydeep Bhattacharya & Qing Liu, 2021. "Reference‐dependent preferences, time inconsistency, and pay‐as‐you‐go pensions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(3), pages 1008-1030, July.
    10. Amitrajeet A. Batabyal & Peter Nijkamp, 2018. "On pessimism and optimism by forward looking agents and the need for pensions," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 1-14, April.
    11. Torben M. Andersen, 2023. "Pensions and the Nordic Welfare Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 10321, CESifo.
    12. Louis Kaplow, 2015. "Government Policy and Labor Supply with Myopic or Targeted Savings Decisions," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 159-193.
    13. Guo, Nick L. & Caliendo, Frank N., 2014. "Time-inconsistent preferences and time-inconsistent policies," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 102-108.
    14. Torben M. Andersen, 2020. "Taxation of capital income in overlapping generations economies," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(5), pages 1245-1261, September.
    15. Louis Kaplow, 2006. "Myopia and the Effects of Social Security and Capital Taxation on Labor Supply," NBER Working Papers 12452, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Batabyal, Amitrajeet & Nijkamp, Peter, 2016. "On Pessimism and Optimism by Forward Looking Agents and the Need for Social Security," MPRA Paper 75965, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 03 Jan 2017.
    17. Joanna Tyrowicz & Krzysztof Makarski & Marcin Bielecki, 2016. "Reforming retirement age in DB and DC pension systems in an aging OLG economy with heterogenous agents," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-36, December.
    18. Nikolov, Plamen & Adelman, Alan, 2019. "Do private household transfers to the elderly respond to public pension benefits? Evidence from rural China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    19. Kreiner, Claus Thustrup & Leth-Petersen, Søren & Skov, Peer Ebbesen, 2017. "Pension saving responses to anticipated tax changes: Evidence from monthly pension contribution records," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 104-107.
    20. Cremer, Helmuth & Pestieau, Pierre, 2011. "Myopia, redistribution and pensions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 165-175, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    pensions; taxation; means-testing; distribution; effective tax rates;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General

    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:ces:ceswps:_5660. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.