The removal of tax expenditures from Spanish personal income tax: Impact on tax collection and income distribution

Abstract

The paper estimates the consequences for tax revenue and income distribution of the removal of the tax expenditures from Spanish Personal Income Tax (IRPF) in place during the 2013 tax year. The paper concludes that the removal of all the tax expenditures analyzed would increase revenue by €24,457 million (37.9% of the IRPF actual collection), and that the redistributive effect, measured by the Reynolds-Smolensky index, would be reduced by 1.1%. The paper also analyzes sundry hypothetical scenarios involving the refunding to individuals of the tax collected through the removal of tax expenditures, and its distributive impact is quantified.