Discussion Papers no. 260

Evidence from the Norwegian tax reform

Income responses to tax changes

Several studies, conducted on U.S. data, have found rather strong income responses to changes in marginal tax rates, when treating tax reforms as "natural experiments" and applying the differences-of-differences estimator on individual income data. The Norwegian tax reform of 1992 implied substantial increases in the net-of-tax rate (1 minus the change in the marginal tax rate) for high-income earners, and this paper provides measures of the elasticity of taxable income with respect to these tax rate changes. The natural experiment assumption of the differences-of-differences approach is discussed. Since the tax reform implied other tax changes and both demographic variables and shifting macroeconomic conditions might impact on income growth, we include other explanatory variables in addition to the net-of-tax rate changes. When including other explanatory variables, tax elasticity estimates are affected, but only modestly. Our estimates of the elasticity of taxable income due to changes in the marginal net-of-tax rate range from about -0.20 to about 0.14.

Om publikasjonen

Tittel

Income responses to tax changes. Evidence from the Norwegian tax reform

Ansvarlige

Thor Olav Thoresen, Karl Ove Aarbu

Serie og -nummer

Discussion Papers no. 260

Utgiver

Statistics Norway, Research Department

Emne

Discussion Papers

Antall sider

25

Målform

Engelsk

Om Discussion Papers

Discussion papers comprise research papers intended for international journals and books. A preprint of a Discussion Paper may be longer and more elaborate than a standard journal article as it may include intermediate calculations, background material etc.

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