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Within the framework of the sixth state reform, part of the personal income tax has been regionalised. What’s more, in ESA2010, certain tax expenditures which were partly recorded as negative revenue in ESA95 are now recorded as general government expenditure. These changes motivate a revision of the personal income tax model which is used both for the short and medium term projections made by the FPB and for variant analyses. The new model makes a distinction between the "prepayment" tax (payroll tax and advance payments) and the "enrolment" tax (which fixes the amounts due under regional and local additional levies). It provides a better link to the macroeconomy and explicitly takes into account the schedule of tax enrolment.
This Working Paper discusses the elasticity and the progressivity of personal income tax. Both concepts deal with the same object but from a different perspective: elasticity has a temporal angle, whereas progressivity has a cross-sectional angle. Progressivity is here estimated based on the distribution statistics of taxable income and taxes. In addition, a method is introduced to assess the negative relationship between progressivity and income growth. In retrospect, that relationship contributes to explain the evolution of progressivity during the past decades. Looking ahead, it can be used to project – under an unchanged policies assumption – an evolution of elasticity different from the constant elasticity hypothesis, typical of short- and medium-term models, and from the unitary elasticity hypothesis, typical of long-term models. In this context, the impact of the larger share of pensions in the tax base on progressivity is taken into account. This Working Paper also discusses the regionalization of personal income tax approved within the framework of the Institutional Agreement for the sixth Reform of the State of 2011. More specifically, it demonstrates how the treatment of elements from the tax system with a fixed dimension (zero tax bracket, tax relief) and elements with a progressive dimension (income scale) influences the specific elasticity of the regional and the federal tax shares in personal income tax.
This working paper analyses public financing in two countries that have already reached the Barcelona goal (R&D expenditure on GDP at least equal to 3%), Finland and Sweden, and compares it with the situation in Belgium. This comparison covers not only the quantitative aspects but also the organisational dimension of the public support for innovation.