Methodology and limitations
I. Methodology
1. Introduction
The personal circumstances of taxpayers vary greatly throughout the countries covered in the Report. A specific methodology has been adopted to produce comparative statistics covering taxes, benefits and labour costs across Latin American and Caribbean countries which is based on the compulsory payments methodology for OECD economies.
-
The Report focuses on eight different family types which vary by household composition and level of earnings. The Report also showcases results throughout the income distribution of labour income.
-
Each household contains a full-time adult employee working in one of a broad range of productive sectors within each Latin American and Caribbean economy. Some of the family profiles include a second working spouse.
-
The annual income from employment is assumed to be equal to a given fraction of the average gross wage earnings of these workers.
-
In case of deciles of income, employment earnings are equal to the average earnings per decile.
-
Additional assumptions are also made regarding other relevant personal circumstances of these wage earners in order to calculate their tax/benefit position.
Under the compulsory payments methodology:
-
The deductions from labour income (referred to in this Report as taxes) are defined as personal income tax, employee and employer social security contributions (paid either to general government or privately managed funds) and payroll taxes less cash transfers.
-
Labour costs are defined as the sum of gross wage earnings, employer’s social security contributions (paid either to general government or privately managed funds) and payroll taxes.
The guidelines described in the following paragraphs form the basis for the calculations shown throughout the Report. Table A.1 sets out the terminology that is used. Where a country has had to depart from the guidelines, this is noted in the text and/or in the country details contained in Part II of the Report. The number of taxpayers with the defined characteristics and the wage level of the average workers vary between both Latin American and Caribbean economies and OECD economies.
2. Taxpayer characteristics
The eight household types identified in the Report are set out in Table A.2. Any children in the household are assumed to be aged 15 or under. The family is assumed to have no income source other than employment and cash benefits.
3. The range of industries covered
The standard assumption for calculating average wage earnings is based on the weighted labour income average derived from income household surveys for Latin American and Caribbean countries.
In the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, the standard assumption for calculating average wages is based on the Sectors B-N of the International Standard Industrial Classification of all Economic Activities (ISIC Revision 4, United Nations).
4. Defining gross wage earnings
This section sets out the assumptions underlying the calculation of the average earnings figures for the “average worker”. The gross wage earnings data have been established using statistical data from the sources set out for each country in Table A.4. Further information on the calculation of the earnings figure is provided in Part II.
-
The data relate to the average earnings in the industry sectors included in the national household surveys for the country as a whole.
-
The calculations are based on the earnings of a formal salaried full-time adult worker (including both manual and non-manual). They relate to the average earnings of all workers in the industry sectors covered. No account is taken of variation between males and females or due to age or region.
-
The worker is assumed to be full-time employed during the entire year without breaks for sickness or unemployment.
-
Two of the household types include a second earner at 33% of average earnings. Such individuals are more likely to be working part-time rather than full-time.
-
The earnings calculation includes all cash remuneration paid to workers in the industries covered taking into account average amounts of overtime, cash supplements (e.g. Christmas bonuses, thirteenth month) and vacation payments typically paid to them.
-
The earnings figures include supervisory and/or management employees.
-
Fringe benefits – which include, for example, provision of food, housing or clothing by the employer either free of charge or at below market-price – are excluded from the calculation of average earnings. Fringe benefits have not been taken into account mainly due to:
-
These types of benefits are difficult to price in a consistent manner. For instance, they may be valued at the actual cost to the employer, their value to the employee or their fair market value.
-
In most countries, they are of minimal importance for the great majority of workers, especially for those at the average wage level.
-
Tax calculations would require additional assumptions and would be more complex if the tax treatment of fringe benefits were incorporated.
-
5. Calculating average gross wages and wage earnings by decile of income
Table A.5 describes the average gross wage and corresponding decile figures calculated for each country. Since statistical data on average gross wage earnings are not generally available in Latin American and Caribbean countries, the process adopted to make appropriate estimates differs from the traditional methodology followed in OECD (2016) Taxing Wages for OECD countries. In this Report, earnings are generally estimated from reported earnings of formal salaried workers on a monthly basis. These estimates are then multiplied by 12 to produce an annual estimate. In the cases of Bolivia and Chile, the data has been adjusted to reflect the real wage increases in 2012 and 2013.
The traditional methodology is for countries to calculate annual average earnings from the average of hourly earnings in each week, month or quarter, weighted by the hours worked during each period, and multiplied by the average number of hours worked during the year, assuming that the worker is neither unemployed nor sick and including periods of paid vacation.
6. Coverage of taxes and benefits
The Report is concerned with personal income tax plus employee and employer social security contributions payable on wage earnings. In addition, payroll taxes (see Section 9) are included in the calculation of the total wedge between labour costs to the employer and the corresponding net take-home pay of the employee.
The calculation of the net income after allowing for payments of tax and compulsory social security contributions includes family benefits paid by general government as cash transfers (see Section 10). Income tax due on capital income and non-wage labour income, direct taxes, other than the personal income tax (net wealth tax, corporate income tax) and all indirect taxes are not considered in this Report.
In this study, all compulsory social security contributions are included regardless of whether they are paid to general government or privately managed funds. Social security contributions paid to general government clearly resemble taxes. They may, however, differ from taxes in that the receipt of social security benefits depends upon appropriate contributions having been made, although the size of the benefits is not necessarily related to the amount of the contributions. Compulsory social security contributions to privately managed funds are also included given that they are compulsory payments and that several countries in the region have adopted some kind of privately managed social security program. Countries finance compulsory public social security programmes to a varying degree from general tax and non-tax revenue together with earmarked contributions. Better comparability between countries is obtained by treating social security contributions as taxes, but they are listed under a separate heading so that their amounts can be identified in any analysis.
7. Calculation of personal income taxes
The specific methods by which income tax payments are calculated for each country are described in Part II of this Report. First, the tax allowances applicable to a taxpayer with the characteristics and income level related to gross annual wage earnings of an average worker are determined. Next, the schedule of tax rates is applied and the resulting tax liability is reduced by any relevant tax credits. An important issue arising in the calculation of the personal income tax liability involves determining which tax reliefs or tax deductions should be taken into account. Two broad categories of reliefs may be distinguished:
-
Standard tax reliefs: deductions which are unrelated to actual expenditures incurred by the taxpayer and are automatically available to all taxpayers who satisfy the eligibility rules specified in the legislation. Standard tax reliefs are usually fixed amounts or fixed percentages of income and are typically the most important set of reliefs in the determination of the income tax paid by workers. These reliefs are taken into account in the calculations – they include:
-
the basic relief which is fixed and is available to all taxpayers or all wage earners, irrespective of their marital or family status;
-
the standard relief which is available to taxpayers depending on their marital status;
-
the standard child relief granted to a family with children aged fifteen or under;
-
the standard relief in respect of work expenses, which is usually a fixed amount or fixed percentage of (gross) wage earnings; and,
-
tax reliefs/deductions allowed for mandatory social security contributions and other (sub-central government) income taxes are also considered as standard reliefs since they apply to all wage earners and represent relate to compulsory payments.
-
-
Non-standard tax reliefs: These are reliefs which are wholly determined by reference to actual expenses incurred. They are therefore neither fixed amounts nor fixed percentages of income. Examples of non-standard tax reliefs include reliefs for interest on qualifying loans (e.g. for the purchase of a house), private insurance premiums, and charitable donations. These are not taken into account in calculating the tax position of employees.
Standard reliefs are separately identified and their impact on average tax rates is calculated in the results tables shown in Part II of this Report. The latter includes a brief description of the main non-standard reliefs for the majority of the countries.
8. Social security contributions
Compulsory social security contributions paid by employees and employers to general government, to social security funds under the effective control of government or to privately managed funds are included in the coverage of this Report. In most countries, contributions are levied on gross earnings and earmarked to provide social security benefits.
9. Payroll taxes
The tax base of a payroll tax is either a proportion of the payroll or a fixed amount per employee.
Payroll taxes are included in total tax wedges described in this Report, given that they increase the gap between gross labour costs and net take-home pay in the same way as income tax and social security contributions do. The main difference compared with the latter is that the payment of payroll taxes does not confer an entitlement to social security benefits.
Also, the tax base of payroll taxes may differ from the tax base of employer social security contributions. For example, certain fringe benefits may only be liable to payroll tax. Because this Report presents the standard case, the payroll tax base is – depending on the relevant legislation – gross wages (excluding fringe benefits and other items of compensation that vary per employee), gross wages plus employer social security contributions, or a fixed amount per employee.
10. Family and cash benefits from the general government
Tax reliefs and family cash transfers universally paid in respect of dependent children aged 15 years or under who are attending school are included in the scope of the study. Where tax reliefs or cash transfers vary within this age range, the most generous provisions are adopted.
Relevant cash payments are those received from general government. In some cases, for example in Colombia, the cash benefits include amounts that are paid without consideration of the number of children.
11. Payable tax credits
Payable (non-wastable) tax credits are tax credits that can exceed tax liability, where the excess, if any, can be paid as a cash transfer to the taxpayer. In principle, these credits can be treated in different ways according to whether they are regarded as tax provisions or cash transfers or a combination of these.
OECD (2015a) Revenue Statistics publication1 requires that
-
Only the portion of a payable tax credit that is claimed to reduce or eliminate a taxpayer’s liability (the “tax expenditure” component) should be deducted in the reporting of tax revenues;
-
The part of the tax credit that exceeds a taxpayer’s tax liability and is paid to him/her (the “cash transfer” component) should be treated as an expenditure item and not deducted in the reporting of tax revenues.
In OECD (2016) Taxing Wages publication and in this Report, the full amount of any payable tax credit is taken into account in the income tax calculation. Strict consistency with OECD/ECLAC/CIAT/IDB (2016) Revenue Statistics in Latin American and Caribbean publication would require that only the tax expenditure component be offset against derived income tax, with the excess (if any) treated as a cash transfer. However, this approach would diminish rather than strengthen the informational content of the derived results in this Report. In particular, limiting tax credit claims to tax expenditure amounts would yield a zero income tax liability and zero average income tax rate where cash refunds are provided. Where tax credits claims are not constrained in this way, negative income tax liabilities and negative average income tax rates would result where cash transfers are provided. Arguably, these negative amounts more clearly convey the taxpayer’s position (which is improved relative to the no-tax situation). Also, not including the cash transfer portion of payable tax credits in the “cash transfers from general government” item of the country tables permits greater transparency of the latter which focuses on “pure” cash transfers only.
12. The calculation of the marginal tax rates
In most cases, the marginal tax rates are calculated by considering the impact of a small increase (one unit of local currency) in gross earnings on personal income tax, social security contributions and cash benefits. However, in the case of a non-working spouse, the move from a zero to a small positive income is unrepresentative of income changes and therefore of little interest. So, for this case, the marginal rates for the spouse are calculated by considering the impact of an income increase from zero to 33% of the average wage.
II. Limitations
1. General limitations
The simple approach of comparing the tax/benefit position of example families avoids many of the conceptual and definitional problems involved in more complex international comparisons of tax burdens and general government cash transfer programmes. However, a drawback of this methodology is that the earnings of an average worker will usually occupy a different position in the overall income distribution in different economies, although the earnings relate to workers in similar jobs in various OECD member countries.
Because of the limitations on the taxes and benefits covered in the Report, the data cannot be taken as an indication of the overall impact of the government sector on the welfare of taxpayers and their families. Complete coverage would require studies of the impact of indirect taxes, the treatment of non-wage labour income and other income components under personal income taxes and the effect of other tax allowances and cash benefits. Complete coverage would also require that consideration be given to the effect on welfare of services provided by the state, either free or below cost, and the incidence of corporate and other direct taxes on earnings and prices. Such a broad coverage is not possible in an international comparison of all OECD and Latin American and Caribbean countries. The differences between the results shown here and those of a full study of the overall impact on employees of government interventions in the economy would vary from one country to another. They would depend on the relative shares of different kinds of taxes in government revenues and on the scope and nature of government social expenditures.2
The Report shows only the formal incidence of taxes and social security contributions on employees and employers. The final, economic incidence of these deductions may be quite different, because the burden may be shifted from employers onto employees and vice versa by market adjustments to gross wages.
The income left at the disposal of a taxpayer may represent different standards of living in various countries because the range of goods and services on which the income is spent and their relative prices differ as between countries. In those countries where the general government sector provides a wide range of goods and services (generous basic old age pension, free health services, public housing, university education, etc.), the taxpayer may be left with less cash income but may enjoy the same living standards as a taxpayer receiving a higher cash income but living in a country where there are fewer publicly provided goods and services.
Finally, it should be noted that the results presented for Brazil, Chile and Mexico in this Report differ from those presented in OECD (2015b) in the annual OECD Taxing Wages publication. The figures presented in this report have been calculated under the Compulsory Payments methodology which includes all mandatory social security contributions irrespective of whether they are paid to general government or privately managed funds.
2. Some specific limitations on the income tax calculation
The exclusion of non-wage income and the limited number of tax reliefs covered imply that the average rates of income tax in the tables in this publication will not necessarily reflect the actual rates confronting taxpayers at these levels of earnings. Actual rates may be lower than the calculated rates because the latter do not take into account non-standard expense-related reliefs. On the other hand, actual rates may be higher than calculated rates because the latter do not take into account tax on non-wage income received by employees.
The decision not to calculate separately average rates of income tax taking into account the effect of non-standard tax reliefs was taken because:
-
Expense-related deductions are substitutes for direct cash subsidies, in many cases. To take into account these reliefs while ignoring any corresponding direct subsidies would distort comparisons of take-home pay plus cash transfers;
-
The special tax treatment of certain expenses may be linked to special treatment of any income associated with these expenses (e.g. the tax treatment voluntary social security contributions and pension income) which is beyond the scope of this study.
References
OECD (2016a), Taxing Wages 2016, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/tax_wages-2016-en
OECD/CIAT/IDB (2016), Revenue Statistics in Latin America and the Caribbean 2016, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/rev_lat_car-2016-en-fr
OECD (2015a), Revenue Statistics 2015, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/rev_stats-2015-en-fr
OECD (2015b), Taxing Wages 2015, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/tax_wages-2015-en
Notes
← 1. A Special Feature in the 2001 edition discusses the alternative treatments and the conceptual and practical difficulties that arise in deciding which is the most appropriate approach for the purpose of reporting internationally comparable tax revenue figures.
← 2. For an analysis on tax and social spending incidence, consult: Lustig, N. (2016), “El impacto del sistema tributario y el gasto social en la distribución del ingreso y la pobreza en América Latina: Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Perú y Uruguay”, CEQ Working paper No. 47, Commitment to Equity Institute, Tulane University.