Family Taxation In Europe PDF Download

This paper compares the treatment of the family in the eleven Euro Countries and U.K. tax systems. For the sake of simplicity families with only one earner are considered. In the first section we survey the main features of the current systems in the twelve Countries to take account of marriage and the presence of children. In the second section we compare income thresholds below which no tax is due for each Country. In the third section we calculate the costs that each tax system recognizes for the spouse and dependent children. These costs may be explicitly stated as family allowances and child benefits or implicitly derived as a function of tax credits or family quotients and tax schedules. In the fourth sections the tax systems of Italy, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, France and Portugal are simulated on a representative population obtained through a manipulation of the universe of the whole employees in Italy: the simulation allows to evaluate the total tax amount and the impact of the various approaches on three family types: singles, married couples with dependent children, singles with dependent children. In the fifth section, using the same representative population, we present the effects of the adoption of two system based, respectively, on one and two rates: the rates are chosen in order to preserve the same total amount of the current personal income tax in Italy.. A reduced version of this paper was published on ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, Vol. 31, No.5, pp. 5-54, 2001. The published version keeps into account minor changes introduced into the Italian personal incom tax in autumn 2000.