IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oec/ctpaaa/4-en.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trends in Top Incomes and their Tax Policy Implications

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen Matthews

    (OECD)

Abstract

This paper uses data derived from tax returns to analyse trends in the share of pre-tax personal income going to top income recipients. These data provide a more reliable source of information on top incomes than household surveys and allow a perspective of almost a century. Since the early 1980s there has been a recovery in the share of top incomes, especially in the share of the top percentile group. The increase started earlier and has been greater in the US than elsewhere. Strong upward trends can also be seen in other English-speaking countries, but such trends are more muted in Continental European countries. The differences in trends between countries may reflect measurement issues to some degree. An important feature of the increased share is that it is mostly attributable to higher employment and business income, not capital income, and reflects such factors as the incentive effects of cuts in (top) marginal tax rates and the fact that the remuneration of top executives and finance professionals has become increasingly related to ‘performance’, particularly through the use of stock and stock options. The policy implications of these trends depend in part on income mobility; and the limited data available suggest that there is significant mobility and that its scale has decreased only slightly over time. They also depend on the likely behavioural response to increased taxation of top incomes, where the empirical literature suggests that taxable income elasticities in some countries can be large. The paper considers the pros and cons of possible reforms in the light of such evidence.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Matthews, 2011. "Trends in Top Incomes and their Tax Policy Implications," OECD Taxation Working Papers 4, OECD Publishing.
  • Handle: RePEc:oec:ctpaaa:4-en
    DOI: 10.1787/5kg3h0v004jf-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1787/5kg3h0v004jf-en
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1787/5kg3h0v004jf-en?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Paolo Caro, 2020. "Decomposing Personal Income Tax Redistribution with Application to Italy," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 18(1), pages 113-129, March.
    2. Margit Schratzenstaller, 2013. "Besteuerung höherer Einkommen und Vermögen: internationale Entwicklungstendenzen, Möglichkeiten und Grenzen," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 82(1), pages 13-34.
    3. Katharina Jenderny, 2016. "Mobility of Top Incomes in Germany," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 62(2), pages 245-265, June.
    4. Kida Nakije, 2013. "The History of Tax Administration of Kosovo And Its Efficiency," Acta Universitatis Danubius. OEconomica, Danubius University of Galati, issue 9(3), pages 5-21, June.

    More about this item

    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:oec:ctpaaa:4-en. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ctoecfr.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.