This paper is an empirical study of redistributive preferences. Our interest is what motivates net contributors to support redistributive policies. Using instrumental variable estimation and exploiting a particularity of the Spanish labour market we estimate how workers’ declared preferences for unemployment benefits spending respond to changes in the local unemployment rate. We then decompose this response into the part explained by risk aversion, and thus demand for insurance, and the part explained by the public goods nature of redistribution. Our results suggest that the declared preferences of workers for unemployment benefits spending are driven by demand for insurance rather than any public goods component. We show how these results suggest that preferences for redistribution in the form of unemployment benefits are driven by insurance considerations rather than by any public goods consideration.

With direct incentives and sanctions being the most common instruments to fight tax evasion, the theoretical literature has tended to overlook indirect schemes, such as itemised deductions, in which one agent’s behaviour a effects the likelihood that others will declare their revenue. Itemised deductions provide an incentive for consumers to declare their purchases. This induces a partial shift in the demand from the black market to the legal one, for consumers need a transaction receipt to enjoy the tax deduction. I show that it is possible to increase tax proceeds by choosing a suitable level of itemised deduction, and this, for any level of taxation. Indeed, the cost for the tax authority on the consumers’ side is more than compensated for by the extra proceeds generated on the sellers’ side.

The main objective of this paper is to calculate the distribution of the tax burden across income levels in Spain between 1960 and 1990. The chosen period covers the final years of Franco’s dictatorship and the first ones of the present parliamentary regime, and is thus meant to explore how political change was reflected on taxation. Does transition entail a fiscal revolution? Here is one case study developed and compared to other national experiences. Effective tax reform seems to have been politically blocked during the dictatorship, with public budgets growing fundamentally on the grounds of social security contributions. Democracy brought about a comprehensive transformation starting in 1977, which aimed at improving fairness (progressivity) and increasing revenue (to fund the development of the Welfare State). In this work I analyse whether the reforms entailed effective changes in the distribution of the tax burden, by imputing tax collection to taxpayers, based on income and consumption micro-data from Household Budget Surveys. The results show a persistent (albeit decreasing) regressivity in the tax system, which caused an increasingly negative redistribution of income. Pre-Tax incomes grew unequal during the period and net incomes even more so as a result: the tax reform did not fulfill its equalizing promises. The joint effect of the fiscal system, however, seems to have been slightly positive due to progressive social spending.

The design of a tax system is a daunting task. Economies have become increasingly complex, which makes the design of taxes has to take into account behavioral taxpayers’ responses – including mobility -, but also tax planning issues. Additionally, increasing inequality trends put more pressure on design. This complex framework increases the need of complete and constantly updated information about the functioning of the system to carry out welfare-enhancing reforms and having stable sources of public funding. It seems now the moment the Spanish tax system takes advantage of all sources of information to undertake a necessary reform. For this ambitious purpose, we aim at providing a novel source of information: the (objective) opinion of tax professionals. From a survey all over Spain, tax professionals unanimously conclude the current tax system is unfair, while the main inefficiencies, rather than due to traditional responses, come out as a consequence of tax planning and tax mobility. We hope the complete results of the survey are a useful source of information.

The standard expected utility model of tax evasion predicts that evasion is decreasing in the marginal tax rate (the Yitzhaki puzzle). The existing literature disagrees on whether prospect theory overturns the puzzle. We disentangle four distinct elements
of prospect theory and find loss aversion and probability weighting to be redundant in respect of the puzzle. Prospect theory fails to reverse the puzzle for various classes of endogenous specification of the reference level. These classes include, as special cases, the most common specifications in the literature. New specifications of the reference level are needed, we conclude.

El Foro Fiscal IEB: el sistema fiscal español en tiempos de crisis, ¿cambios o reforma? es un debate público sobre el sistema fiscal español actual y su posible reforma. El foro toma como punto de partida un análisis académico y se centra en seis aspectos del sistema: IRPF; Sociedades; Consumo; Riqueza; Administración Tributaria y Descentralización Fiscal.