Integration des Solidaritätszuschlags in die Einkommensteuer: Verteilungs- und Aufkommenswirkungen

In order to cover the costs of the German reunification in 1990, the German government introduced a solidarity surcharge to the personal and corporate income tax. Twenty-five years later, the solidarity surcharge is still collected in addition to the regular income tax to finance the federal budget. It has recently been proposed to integrate the solidarity surcharge into the regular income tax schedule. In this paper, the authors analyse the redistribution and revenue effects of such a reform by using a highly detailed microsimulation model developed at ZEW Mannheim.