Gendered effects of the personal income tax: evidence from a schedular system with individual filing in a developing country

Type Working Paper - Universidad de la República
Title Gendered effects of the personal income tax: evidence from a schedular system with individual filing in a developing country
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2017
URL https://www.colibri.udelar.edu.uy/bitstream/123456789/8433/1/DT E 2017-02.pdf
Abstract
This article analyzes the gender differences in the Personal Income Tax (PIT)-to-income
ratio in Uruguay, considering the household as the unit of analysis. For this purpose, we
use data from the 2013 Uruguay Household Survey and we classify the population by
household type and the employment status of household members. Although the tax code
does not explicitly specify gender differences, the tax burden varies among households
types. When analyzing these differences, our findings suggest that the PIT serves as
somewhat of an incentive towards equal gender time allocation within the family, which is
consistent with gender equity. In turn, this pattern is reinforced by non-desirable aspects
such as higher levels of informality among women and a higher level of non-taxable
sources of income among single female households. The above conclusion relies on the
assumption of individual filing. Our analysis also observes that the strengths of the PIT
system from the gender perspective are eroded by the possibility to opt for a (rarely used)
joint filing. The empirical strategy was assessed through the estimation of a zero-one
inflated beta model (ZOIB). This model properly addresses the fact that the PIT-to-income
ratio includes many zero data points.

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