La redistribution fiscale face au chômage

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Abstract
In France, the main objective of structural tax/benefit reform has been to cut low-wage payroll contributions, so as to cut labor costs and boost low-wage labor demand. Other countries, such as the U.S., have tried to boost low-wage labor supply by granting earned income tax credits to low-wage workers. This papers takes into account both demand and supply effects at different wage levels and offers a theoretical analysis of these strategies, as well as a numerical application to the french case. The main conclusion is that the very high effective marginal tax rates (80-90 %) imposed on low-wage workers in France, even though they admit some theoretical justifications, have problably reached their limits, and that significant job creations could be obtained by cutting those rates, for exemple by cutting the employee payroll tax imposed at the level of the minimum wage. The employer payroll tax cuts introduced by the Balladur-Juppé governments can only stimulate labor demand, since they vanish at a very high rate in case they are shifted to the employee. It is possible that this reduces dratiscally their efficiency.

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