UKDA Study No. 6358 - EuroPTax. Who pays for the state? The evolution of personal taxation in postwar Europe, 1958-2007

The massive expansion of the state in post-war Europe has rested on a greatly enlarged fiscal base, yet little is known about how that fiscal base has evolved. This is surprising in view of the fact that the questions of how governments get money, and from whom they get it, are seen to be two of the most important political issues faced in any modern political economy. While most studies of fiscal history try to provide answers to the first question by analyzing the ideological, political and administrative inputs to tax policy, the project's aim was to provide answers to the second question. The project focused on the outcomes of tax policy; what different households across Western Europe have paid in taxes (income tax and social security contributions) at all points on the income scale since 1958. Since such information is not in the public domain we have used national tax rules and wage rates were used in order to infer what households with particular characteristics would have paid in direct taxes each year since 1958. Using the dynamic spreadsheet EuroPTax, details of the effective rates of income tax and social security contributions paid by different households in all the major European democracies since 1958 are provided for the first time as part of the project.