Are Spanish Governments Really Averse to Inequality? A Normative Analysis Using the 1999 Spanish Tax Reform

Abstract

n this paper we use the methodology proposed by Bourguignon and Spadaro (2000b) in order to analyze the changes in social preferences on inequality since the introduction of the 1999 reform of the Spanish Income Tax. Our starting point is the observed distribution of household incomes and marginal tax rates as computed in standard tax-benefit models. We show that it is possible to identify the social welfare function that would make the observed marginal tax rate schedule optimal, given certain simplifying assumptions on individual preferences. We apply this methodology to the 1998 and 1999 Spanish tax benefit systems, using the Spanish wave of the EC Household Panel.