IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/euf/dispap/018.html

Tax Revenue Elasticities Corrected for Policy Changes in the EU

Author

Listed:
  • Gilles Mourre
  • Savina Princen

Abstract

This paper investigates how tax revenue elasticities develop with respect to their tax base and analyses the specific impact of the business cycle. The main novelty of the paper is to use revenue data net of discretionary tax measures. The latter come from a new database, filled by Member States and managed by the European Commission (DG ECFIN). Based on an EU country panel for the period 2001-13, we estimate short-term and long-term revenue elasticities for consumption taxes, social security contributions, personal income taxes and corporate income taxes, using a wide range of specifications. The estimated revenue-to-base elasticities are broadly in line with the results found in previous research, although the robustness of the estimates varies across tax categories. Then, we add different indicators of the business cycle to test its specific influence on the short-term dynamics of revenue-to-base elasticities. This confirms the existence of a specific impact of the business cycle on short-term revenue elasticities – beyond the direct effect on the tax base – for all revenue categories, except for consumption taxes. Corporate income taxes appear to be the most cyclically-dependent tax category, followed by personal income taxes, for which estimation results turn out particularly robust.

Suggested Citation

  • Gilles Mourre & Savina Princen, 2015. "Tax Revenue Elasticities Corrected for Policy Changes in the EU," European Economy - Discussion Papers 018, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    • Handle: RePEc:euf:dispap:018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/publications/tax-revenue-elasticities-corrected-policy-changes-eu_en
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bernd Hayo & Sascha Mierzwa & Umut Ünal, 2023. "Estimating policy-corrected long-term and short-term tax elasticities for the USA, Germany, and the United Kingdom," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(1), pages 465-504, January.
    2. Sean Dougherty & Pietrangelo Biase, 2021. "Who absorbs the shock? An analysis of the fiscal impact of the COVID-19 crisis on different levels of government," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 517-540, July.
    3. Gilles Mourre & Aurélien Poissonnier, 2019. "What Drives the Responsiveness of the Budget Balance to the Business Cycle in EU Countries?," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 54(4), pages 237-249, July.
    4. Francesco Berardini & Fabrizio Renzi, 2022. "Mind the Gap! The (unexpected) impact of COVID-19 pandemic on VAT revenue in Italy," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 669, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    5. Koester, Gerrit & Priesmeier, Christoph, 2017. "Revenue elasticities in euro area countries," Working Paper Series 1989, European Central Bank.
    6. João Tovar Jalles & Youssouf Kiendrebeogo & Raphael Lam & Roberto Piazza, 2024. "Revisiting the countercyclicality of fiscal policy," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 67(3), pages 877-914, September.
    7. Bernd Hayo & Sascha Mierzwa & Umut Unal, 2021. "Estimating Policy-Corrected Long-Term and Short-Term Tax Elasticities for the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202112, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    8. Marius Clemens & Werner Röger, 2022. "Durable Consumption, Limited VAT Pass-Through and Stabilization Effects of Temporary VAT Changes," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2004, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    9. Marius Clemens & Werner Röger, 2021. "Temporary VAT Reduction during the Lockdown," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1944, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    10. Clemens, Marius & Röger, Werner, 2021. "Temporary VAT Reduction during the Lockdown - Evidence from Germany," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242459, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Alina Georgeta AILINCA, 2022. "Assessing Some Fiscal Indicators In The European Union In The Period 2000-2021," Contemporary Economy Journal, Constantin Brancoveanu University, vol. 7(1), pages 28-37.
    12. Fotini Economou & Ioanna Kountouri & Yannis Panagopoulos & Georgia Skintzi & Ekaterini Tsouma, 2022. "Estimating excise tax revenue elasticity and buoyancy for tobacco products and alcoholic beverages: evidence from Greece," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(39), pages 4557-4576, August.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents
    • H6 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:euf:dispap:018. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: ECFIN INFO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dg2ecbe.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.