Tax burden

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The tax burden is

Depending on the approach, the individual stress indicators show considerable differences. Due to different approaches, macroeconomic and individual pressure indicators are not comparable.

Tax burden of an employee by tax bracket

The tax burden of an employee results from the sum of wage tax , solidarity surcharge , possibly church tax and contributions to statutory social insurance .

Tax burden of an average earner

The Federal Ministry of Finance publishes a data collection on tax policy every year. It contains an overview of the disposable income of employees with average incomes and shows the tax burden for different household types . The average income is the result of the gross annual wages of all employees - including those with low wages (part-time workers , “mini-jobbers”, trainees, etc.) - divided by the total number of employees. The inclusion of low-wage earners leads to significantly lower average gross wages than the OECD publication “Taxing Wages” is based on. Taxes and duties include wage tax, the solidarity surcharge and social security contributions.

Tax burden according to national accounts

Tax and contribution ratios in the definition of the national accounts are based on the European system of national accounts - ESA . The taxes and social security contributions calculated according to this system are set in relation to nominal GDP and thus result in the macroeconomic tax and contribution ratio . The national accounts ratios enable comparisons between different countries. In the national accounts delimitation, inheritance tax , VAT own resources and customs duties are not taken into account, which reduces the national accounts ratios. Child benefit , home ownership allowance and investment allowance are not offset against tax revenue , so they increase the national accounts rates. The same applies to “fictitious social contributions” by the state for its civil servants, voluntary social contributions and payments between insurance providers. In the national accounts, taxes and social security contributions are allocated to the period in which the obligation to pay the tax / contribution arises (originating recording).

Tax burden in an international comparison

OECD

The “Revenue Statistics” of the OECD contain a comparison of the burden structures of the tax systems in different OECD countries with the help of macroeconomic tax ratios. Every spring, the OECD publishes the publication “Taxing Wages”. This publication contains a comparison of the tax burden on typical employee households in the OECD countries. The tax rates are based on a simulation of the wage tax calculation. The tax and contribution burden is calculated for eight household types, which differ according to marital status, number of children and income level. It is assumed that there is no other income besides the wages , individual peculiarities cannot be taken into account. In the case of German employee households, only the flat-rate income allowance is applied. Only the statutory social security contributions are taken into account as special expenses. Church tax is not included. In some OECD countries - unlike in Germany - child benefit is not treated as a tax deduction; the child benefit payments are then included in the calculation of the indicators as “transfer payments”.

According to the OECD study "Taxing Wages" from 2014, Germany (after Belgium and Austria) is one of the three countries with the highest tax burden from taxes and other charges within the OECD.

EU

The EU Commission publishes its annual publication “Taxation trends in the European Union” every summer for the tax systems in the EU and Norway based on macroeconomic data. The tax revenue is set according to its origin in the definition of the national accounts, ie child benefit, home ownership allowance, investment allowance, pension allowance and employee savings allowance are not deducted. In contrast to the national accounts, inheritance tax, VAT own resources and customs duties are also included. In the case of social security contributions, unlike in the national accounts, voluntary social contributions of the self-employed and the inactive and imputed social contributions of civil servants are not taken into account.

Tax burden by income group in Germany

Stefan Bach (Deputy Head of the State Department of the DIW with a focus on finance and tax policy, social policy, income and wealth distribution) has examined the distribution of the tax burden between rich and poor and put it in relation to the respective income:

Burden by taxes and social contributions - distribution according to household gross equivalent income as a percentage of society as a whole
Quantiles Household gross equivalent income lower limit (€ / month) Gross household income Income and corporate taxes Consumption taxes Total taxes Social contributions Total tax burden Deviation
1st decile 0 2.6 0.0 5.4 2.4 0.7 1.6 - 1.0
2nd decile 966 3.7 0.1 6.3 2.9 2.6 2.7 - 1.0
3rd decile 1 324 4.9 0.5 7.3 3.5 4.3 3.9 - 1.0
4th decile 1 671 5.7 1.1 8.3 4.3 5.8 5.0 - 0.7
5th decile 1 993 7.0 2.1 9.0 5.2 7.7 6.3 - 0.7
6th decile 2,389 8.0 3.9 9.4 6.4 9.6 7.9 - 0.1
7th decile 2,798 9.7 6.6 10.2 8.2 12.1 10.1 + 0.4
8th decile 3 343 11.7 10.3 11.7 10.9 15.5 13.1 + 1.4
9th decile 4019 14.5 16.1 12.7 14.6 19.0 16.6 + 2.1
10th decile 5 271 32.1 59.1 19.7 41.5 22.8 32.8 +0.7
total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Top 1.0% 12 892 9.9 25.8 4.4 16.3 1.7 9.5 - 0.4
Top 0.1% 36 885 4.3 12.1 1.6 7.4 0.1, 4.0 −0.3

Direct taxes are clearly progressive , increasing from decile to decile. In contrast, indirect taxes have a strongly degressive effect. Thus the entire tax burden is degressive in the lower section and progressive only in the upper section; as well as the total load, but with the exception of the top decile in which the exceeding of the income threshold leads with the Social Security to falling load. Bach also points out that the progression of the tax burden for the rich is likely to be overstated, since both retained corporate profits and profits and capital income from (lower taxed) foreign countries are not recorded.

It can be clearly seen that the above-average “top performers” of the total tax burden are in deciles 7 to 10. The deciles 5 to 9 “add up” to social security, while the 9th and 10th deciles are due to direct taxes. However, the super-rich are completely out of the ordinary ; who - in contrast to the “only rich” - are downright beneficiaries of this redistribution in that they are drawn on below average in relation to income.

swell

  • Indicators of the tax burden - Monthly report September 2010 of the BMF
  • Integrated database SOEP and EVS as well as income tax statistics (updated to 2015).
  • Bach, Stefan; Beznoska, Martin; Steiner Viktor; among other things: Who bears the tax burden in Germany? Distribution effects of the German tax and transfer system. in: 'Political Advice Compact 114/2016.
  • Study by the Hans Böckler Foundation 2016.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ OECD study "Taxing Wages" page 8, "Income tax plus employer contributions less cash benefits, 2014" ("Income tax plus employer's social contributions minus tax benefits")
  2. ↑ OECD study: Germany is the absolute world leader in terms of tax burden , Die Welt , April 11, 2014
  3. ↑ Equivalence weighted according to the OECD scale
  4. ↑ Stefan Bach : Our taxes. Who is paying? How much? For what? , Westend Frankfurt / Main 2016, p. 157.
  5. ↑ median value
  6. ↑ Stefan Bach : Our taxes. Who is paying? How much? For what? , Westend Frankfurt / Main 2016, p. 158 f.