Abstract:

This article is about the distribution of the wage tax (and social contributions) burden in Romania. It presents the realities from two different years, 2012 and 2018. Why choose the years 2012 and 2018 for such analysis? Simply because, the year 2012 is relevant for a tax system already in place for a certain number of years (2005-2012) . Then, starting the year 2018, some legislative changes generated effects useful to be studied. The main finding of the analysis is that the wage tax (and the social contributions) work pretty well in terms of “social justice”. In other words, they affect more the workers with higher revenues than those with lower wages. Thus, the tax policy concerns could be more focused on other issues than justice, such as increasing taxation policy effectiveness, better understanding of the income elasticity of the tax payment, improving the administrative capacity of the fiscal administration, etc. (World Bank, 2012)

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