INEQUALITY, TAXATION AND REDISTRIBUTION: INSIGHTS FROM A GERMAN/FRENCH PERSPECTIVE

过去几十年来，许多国家的财富和收入不平等现象日益严重，而欧洲福利国家在持续的经济困难和日益全球化的背景下也受到压力。EQUITAX采用法德视角，旨在通过阐明最有效的税收和转移支付工具来解决收入和财富不平等问题。为了实现这一目标，EQUITAX将结合宏观经济、理论和应用微观计量经济学方法，对税收与不平等之间的联系进行开创性的全面分析。第一个工作包将对法国和德国收入和财富不平等的动态进行深入的比较分析。我们将首先构建德国税前和税后收入不平等的原始长期序列。然后，我们将联合收割机与现有的法国系列相结合，研究各国的税收和转移支付制度如何成功地减少了不平等，以及共同的和特定国家的公共政策（如政治、社会和财政制度）如何影响收入和财富不平等的历史演变。第二个工作包将研究富裕家庭在多大程度上改变了他们的行为，以应对税收改革。特别是，我们将利用来自法国和德国的优秀行政税收数据和急剧变化的组合，构成真实的的“自然实验”，用于法国的财富征税和德国的遗产征税。这将使我们能够为科学界和政策制定者衡量关键投入的可靠估计：财富税对储蓄、工作、移民或使用最小化应税资本收入的优化策略的决定有什么影响？为了避免遗产税，顶级财富持有者在多大程度上会调整生前赠与的时间？第三个工作包将通过从微观和宏观角度将之前工作包的投入与税收理论相结合，探索实际税收政策的主要低效之处以及“最佳”系统可能是什么样子。我们将首先计算沿着每个国家收入分配的税收边际无谓损失，以指出实际税收制度效率低下的分配部分。然后，我们将依靠一个宏观模拟模型，在法国以及德国实施不同的税收改革的影响的福利分析。这一分析将为税收政策改革（讨论）提供指导。通过识别不平等、税收和再分配的各种渠道和机制，我们预计EQUITAX将有助于建立更好的治理。这些新的见解可以为公共辩论提供可靠的信息来源，并为决策者设计以知识为基础的政策，以建立一个公平、团结与和平的欧洲。

While wealth and income inequality is on the rise in many countries over the past decades, European Welfare States have come under pressure in a context of persistent economic difficulties and increasing globalization. Adopting a Franco-German perspective, EQUITAX aims to contribute to this issue by shedding light on the most effective tax-and-transfer instruments to fight income and wealth inequality? To achieve this aim, EQUITAX will develop a pioneer and comprehensive analysis on the link between taxation and inequality, combining macroeconomic, theoretical, and applied microeconometric approaches. The first Working Package will carry out an in-depth comparative analysis of the dynamics of income and wealth inequalities in France and in Germany. We will first construct original long-term series of pre-tax and post-tax income inequality for Germany. We will then combine them with the existing French series to investigate how the respective national tax-and transfer systems have succeeded in reducing inequality, and how common and country-specific public policies—such as political, social, and fiscal institutions—affect the historical evolution of income and wealth inequality.The second Working Package will examine the extent to which rich households modify their behavior in response to tax reform. In particular, we will exploit the combination of excellent administrative tax data from France and Germany and sharp changes, constituting real “natural experiments”, for the taxation of wealth in France and for the taxation of bequests in Germany. This will allow us to measure reliable estimates of key inputs for the scientific community and policymakers: What is the impact of wealth taxation on the decision to save, work, emigrate or use optimization strategies minimizing taxable capital income? To what extent do top wealth holders adjust the timing of inter vivos gifts in order to avoid bequest taxation?The third Working Package will explore which may be the main inefficiencies of actual tax policies and what “optimal” systems may look like, by combining the inputs from the previous working packages with taxation theory, both from the micro and macro perspective. We will first compute the marginal deadweight loss of taxation along the income distribution of each country in order to point out parts of the distribution on which actual tax systems would be inefficient. We will then rely on a macro-simulation model to implement a welfare analysis of the impact of different tax reforms in France as well as in Germany. This analysis will provide a guide for (discussion on) tax policy reforms.By identifying various channels and mechanisms on inequality, taxation and redistribution, we expect EQUITAX will help to build better governance. These new insights could provide a reliable source of information for the public debate and serve policymakers to design knowledge-based policies for a fair, united and peaceful Europe.