Consumption taxes and income inequality: An international perspective with microsimulation

Consumption taxes are often considered as the most anti-redistributive component of the tax system. Yet, very few estimates, and fewer international comparisons of the redistributive impact of consumption taxes exist in the literature, due to scarce data on household expenditures. We use household budget surveys and microsimulation to provide consistent estimates of the regressivity of consumption taxes for a large panel of countries and years. We propose a new method for imputing consumption expenditure across countries, using widely available data on income and socio-demographic characterist... Mehr ...