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This paper draws inference on the effect of changes in indirect taxation on household spending on cinema and performing arts using data from the Spanish household expenditure survey. As of September 2012, value-added tax (VAT) on cinema and performing arts in Spain was raised 13 percent points, with the exception of the Canary Islands which are not part of the Spanish VAT territory. Indirect taxation levied on cinema and performing arts through the General Indirect Tax of Canary Islands (Impuesto General Indirecto de Canarias, IGIC) had changed in July 2012 by only 2 percent points. Such an uneven raise in the tax rates is the source of exogenous variation used for identification in this paper. As the sample of treated households (exposed to the VAT rise) is much larger than the sample of untreated households (exposed to the IGIC rise), we use causal inference methods to estimate the average treatment effect of the VAT rise on the untreated households. We find that the average household expenditure on cinema and performing arts of the untreated households would not have changed significantly, had untreated households been exposed to the VAT rise. However, this average treatment effect would not have been homogeneous, as we identify an average treatment effect conditional on participation of 52.37 euros. Thus, the tax rise would have increased the annual expenditure of those households that spend on cinema and performing arts regularly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how taxable income responds to changes in marginal tax rates, using as a main source of identifying variation three large reforms to the Spanish personal income tax implemented in the period 1999–2014. The most reliable estimates of the elasticity of taxable income (ETI) with respect to the net-of-tax rate for this period are between 0.45 and 0.64. The ETI is about three times larger for self-employed taxpayers than for employees and larger for business income than for labor and capital income. The elasticity of broad income is smaller, between 0.10 and 0.24, while the elasticity of some tax deductions such as the one for private pension contributions exceeds one. Our estimates are similar across a variety of estimation methods and sample restrictions and also robust to potential biases created by mean reversion and heterogeneous income trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use administrative data on tax returns to characterize the distributions of before- and after-tax income, tax liabilities and tax credits in Spain for individuals and households. We use the most recent available data, 2015 for individuals and 2013 for households, but also discuss how the income distribution and taxes have changed since 2002. We also estimate effective tax functions that capture the underlying heterogeneity of the data in a parsimonious way. These parametric functions can be used to calculate after-tax incomes in surveys where this information is not directly available, and can also be used in quantitative work in macroeconomics and public finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Based on a model of behavioural response to taxes, and using the Taxpayers Panel from the Instituto de Estudios Fiscales for the period 1999–2009, we analyse whether the dual nature of the Spanish personal income tax (PIT), reinforced by the 2007 reform, has influenced taxpayers’ behaviour, causing them to convert part of their ‘general income’ (from labour, real estate or economic activities) into ‘savings income’ (from movable capital or capital gains). We also extend the analysis of income shifting and study whether Spanish taxpayers also responded to the different tax treatments given to the two types of savings income (from movable capital and capital gains) until 2007, transforming savings income from one type to the other. The results of our study demonstrate three facts. First, Spanish taxpayers did respond to the different tax rates, shifting income from the general base to different forms of savings, especially capital gains. The highest‐income individuals and the self‐employed and business owners are the groups where this behaviour was most marked. Second, the self‐employed and business owners also turned income from movable assets into capital gains, guided by their different tax rates. And third, we find signs of ‘anticipation’ and ‘learning’ effects caused by the 2007 tax reform. We believe that the results obtained will enrich the growing literature on income shifting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the motives that underlie Spaniards' retirement saving decisions is important because many, if not most, future retirees will need to rely on personal savings to maintain a decent standard of living. The governor of the Bank of Spain has stated recently that the current public pension system will not guarantee an adequate pension to the citizens, advising to save now for retirement. In this debate on public pensions, and the complementary role that private pensions might play in Spain, this article has shed light on the decision of Spanish households to engage in individual pension plans and it has identified which factors determine the total amount saved in such retirement plans. Using micro data from the Bank of Spain ( Survey of Household Finances 2011), the analysis has revealed that the expectations of lower future income, along with preferences for the financial risk and education, exert an important influence on the likelihood of enrolling in a private pension plan. University education minimizes the myopic behavior of households in the sense of making them more forward-looking and cautious in the face of their future well-being. Additionally using Heckman's methodology to correct for the problem of selection bias, our results have revealed that liquidity constraints affect negatively the total amount of money saved for retirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1970s, hours worked per working-age person in Spain were higher than in the United States. Starting in 1975, however, hours worked in Spain fell by 40%. We find that 80% of the decline in hours worked can be accounted for by the evolution of taxes in an otherwise standard neoclassical growth model. Although taxes play a crucial role, we cannot argue that taxes drive all of the movements in hours worked. In particular, the model underpredicts the large decrease in hours in 1975-1986 and the large increase in hours in 1994-2007. The lack of productivity growth in Spain during 1994-2015 has little impact on the model's prediction for hours worked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we document the behavior of emancipation over one of the biggest boom-bust cycles experienced by the Spanish economy. In principle, the economic difficulties faced by the Spanish youth during the last recession would have hampered a normal emancipation pace. However, we find that the proportion living away from parents among those aged 18-40 has not decreased but increased from 44 % during the boom (2005-2008) to 46 % during the bust (2009-2013). A simple decomposition reveals that this is mainly driven by the substantial rise in the emancipation rate among the full-time employed workers during the bust. To explain this change we discuss several factors such as macroeconomic conditions, rental subsidy policy, higher labor mobility, selection bias, reverse causation, time-lag in adjustment and secular trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article estimates, for the Spanish personal income tax, the elasticity of reported gross income to marginal tax rates. The identification of this elasticity has been performed using the reform approved by Law 35/2006, which came into force in January 2007. The elasticities obtained suggest the existence of important efficiency costs, with significant regional differences. The average elasticity estimated for Spain as a whole is 0.676. However, this elasticity is highly dispersed throughout the Spanish administrative regions, which indicates the unequal power of distortion of the tax. Thus, households whose principal source of income is salary display an elasticity of 0.337, compared to 0.682 for households whose main income source comes from business or savings. Lastly, a positive correlation is also detected between elasticity and income level: an elasticity of 3.6 is reached for taxpayers with an annual gross income exceeding 100 000€. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyzes the effect of private supplementary pensions (and the tax reliefs that aim to stimulate such plans) on national saving in Spain. It tries to test the alleged positive effects of private pension plans on savings. Using a longitudinal dataset and fixed-effects methods, we find that tax-favored contributions to a pension fund are not associated with a lower consumption level, which implies that this policy does not increase national saving. The empirical results on the impact of contributions on private household wealth are less clear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study is to show the potential of behavioural microsimulation models as powerful tools for the ex ante evaluation of public policies. We analyse the impact of recent Spanish income tax reforms upon efficiency and household and social welfare and study the effects of various (basic-income and vital-minimum) flat tax schemes. The analysis is performed using a microsimulation model in which labour supply is explicitly taken into account. Instead of following the traditional continuous approach (Hausman, Labour supply, Aaron and Pechman (eds.), How Taxes Affect Economic Behaviour, The Brooking Institution, Washington, DC, 1981; Econometrica, 53: 1255–1282, 1985; Taxes and labour supply, Auerbach and Feldstein, (eds.), Handbook of Public Economics, North-Holland, Amsterdam, vol. 1, 1979), we estimate the direct utility function employing the methodology proposed by Aaberge et al. ( Scand. J. Econ., 97: 635–659, 1995) and Van Soest ( J. Hum. Resour., 30: 63–88, 1995). We maintain population heterogeneity by applying a social welfare analysis to the complete sample, rather than merely focusing on the active population. The source of our data is a sample of Spanish individuals in the 1995 wave of the EC Household Panel. We find that the redistribution policies considered have only had a minor impact on economic efficiency but, by contrast, have significantly affected social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we analyse whether the Ricardian equivalence hypothesis is a valid approximation for Spain’s economic reality or whether there exist deviations from that situation which would be more in line with the conventional Keynesian perspective of the effects of debt on private consumption-savings decisions.Our aim is to contribute to the rather sparse empirical literature on the subject for the Spanish case. The analysis is based on annual aggregate data for Spain covering the years 1955 to 2000, and uses both the structural and the Euler equation approaches to test the neutrality proposition, and is thus to be considered as a generalization of foregoing work on the Spanish economy.The findings indicate that support for Ricardian equivalence is mixed, while we also find very little support for the Keynesian specification of consumption and fiscal policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]