This body of nine works has a common thread of using tax records for economic analysis. This approach offers significant benefits, yet it also underscores the necessity for dedicated efforts to ensure the optimal utilisation of the data. The work is divided into two themes. The first theme concerns physical persons and households, with a focus on inequality and intergenerational mobility. The second theme concerns firms, with a focus on multinational enterprises’ profit shifting and fairness. About the first theme, Paper 1A analyses income concentration in Italy with greater territorial granularity than surveys and examines personal income tax redistribution. Papers 1B and 1C employ inheritance tax data, integrated with other sources, to assess wealth distribution of the Italian population over the 1995-2016 period. Results demonstrate higher wealth concentration and clearer increasing trends than in surveys. Paper 1D punctually links income of parents and children across two generations of Italians, to study the degree of intergenerational mobility with a precision never reached by other studies for Italy. Paper 1E analyses indicators of the tax burden on labour income in EU countries. The second theme is closely related to the first one, as minimisation of tax liabilities by multinational enterprises benefits disproportionately top income and wealth individuals. Paper 2A employs macro data variables for 172 countries to evaluate the amount of foreign direct investments driven by potential profit shifting. Papers 2B and 2C use microdata derived from the recently introduced mandatory Country-by-Country reports of multinational enterprises. By leveraging the superior worldwide coverage of this dataset compared to financial accounts datasets, the analysis revealed a more pronounced phenomenon of profit shifting by multinational enterprises in the lowest tax jurisdictions, compared to previous literature. Conversely, Paper 2D demonstrates how targeted and well-designed tax incentives for firms can generate positive spillovers for the economy.
Using Tax Records for Economic Analysis of Inequality and Fairness
Acciari, P. (Author). 16 Jan 2025
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis