How Labour ended up taxing itself and why it matters: The long-term evolution of politics in German labour taxation

Kemmerling, Achim

doi:10.1177/0958928713517918

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 57 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our other main contribution is to highlight the tax preferences of different social classes, measured with occupational groups. The analysis conducted in this article reveals an additional tension within centre-left coalitions concerning taxes (Kemmerling, 2014): not only is there a tension between sociocultural professionals on one side and low-skilled service and production workers on the other side concerning social values and the prioritization of investment and consumption (Beramendi et al, 2015; Häusermann et al, 2022), but our analysis of tax policy preference reveals that they also diverge on their willingness to pay. Sociocultural professionals are willing to raise their own tax burden considerably more than production and service sector workers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…In contrast, service and production workers, who are poorer and less educated, are significantly less willing to pay. Hence, not only do these groups differ regarding their spending preferences and their social values (Beramendi et al, 2015; Häusermann et al, 2022), but tax policy preferences also contribute to tensions within the typical social-democratic coalition composed of low-skilled service and production workers and of socio-cultural professionals (see also Kemmerling, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Explaining willingness to pay taxes: The role of income, education, ideology

Jacques

2023

Journal of European Social Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While the drivers of preferences about tax progressivity and redistribution are well identified, the study of willingness to pay taxes remains underdeveloped. This article uses the 2016 ISSP on the Role of Government and the 2018 OECD Risks that Matter surveys to identify which groups of voters are more likely to be willing to pay taxes. It shows that ideology mediates the correlations between education or income and willingness to pay. Among the left, income and education tend to have a positive association with willingness to pay taxes, whereas both variables are negatively associated with willingness to pay among the right. Thus, the core constituencies of left-wing parties composed of socio-cultural professionals and of production and service workers have different tax policy preferences. Socio-cultural professionals, with their higher education and income, are significantly more willing to pay taxes than production and service workers, who share lower education and income.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining willingness to pay taxes: The role of income, education, ideology

Jacques

2023

Journal of European Social Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Yet, even flat liners such as Estonia only tax income above a certain threshold, hence creating a de facto progressive tax with a proportional look. Furthermore, the PIT was much more progressive when it was first introduced, clearly targeting the richer half of society (Kemmerling, 2014; Mares and Queralt, 2015).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democracy and the global spread of progressive taxes

Seelkopf

Lierse

2020

Global Social Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The adoption of modern tax policies is crucial for social development. Taxes raise revenue, which allows governments to invest in public goods and social protection. At the same time, they can be highly redistributive and thus are complementary to social policies. Hence, the adoption of modern taxes is a critical step towards social development as it allows for the very financial foundation for investing in and increasing the well-being of individuals. But how can we explain the global spread of taxes around the world? While most countries nowadays have adopted similar tax instruments, the timing of legislation has varied widely. A common explanation is that democracies are more likely to adopt new and redistributive forms of taxes as they are more accountable to the poor. In this article, we shed light on the link between regime type and tax legislation based on a new historical and global dataset for up to 131 countries since the 19th century. Our findings show that whereas regime type has no influence on the introduction of regressive taxes, democratic countries are more likely to adopt progressive taxes.

show abstract

“…Finally, how does policy feed back into shaping risk allocation and politics? The topic of policy feedback had been brought up earlier by Pierson (2001), but Rueda's piece very effectively laid the (sometimes paradoxical) effects of welfare state reform on the line by arguing that left-wing achievements themselves may over time undermine working class solidarity (see also Kemmerling 2014).…”

Section: Why This Symposium?mentioning

confidence: 99%

How Labor Market Inequality Transforms Mass Politics

Häusermann¹,

Kemmerling²,

Rueda³

2019

PSRM

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Why do left parties lose vote shares in times of economic crisis and hardship? Why do right-wing governments implement seemingly left-wing policies, such as labor market activation? Why is representation becoming more and more unequal? And why do workers vote for right-wing populist parties? Several political science theories propose meaningful and important answers to these key questions for comparative politics, focusing on identity politics, programmatic convergence of parties or exogenous constraints. However, there is an additional and distinct approach to all of the questions above, which emphasizes socio-structural transformations in the labor market: most of the processes above can be understood with reference to increasing labor market inequality and its political implications. The relevance and explanatory power of labor market inequality for mass politics have not been fully acknowledged in comparative political science and this is the reason for this symposium. Labor market inequality affects political preferences and behavior, electoral politics, representation, and government strategies. The main purpose of our symposium is to make broader comparative politics research aware of the crucial structural changes that labor markets have undergone in the advanced capitalist democracies of the OECD, and of the tremendous implications these changes have had for politics.

show abstract

How Labour ended up taxing itself and why it matters: The long-term evolution of politics in German labour taxation

Cited by 8 publications

References 57 publications

Explaining willingness to pay taxes: The role of income, education, ideology

Explaining willingness to pay taxes: The role of income, education, ideology

Democracy and the global spread of progressive taxes

How Labor Market Inequality Transforms Mass Politics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About