ISP Working Paper Number 06-21

Who Bears the Burden of Taxes on Labor Income in Russia?

Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Mark Rider, Riatu Qibthiyyah, and Sally Wallace , August 2006

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Abstract:

In 2001 the Russian government introduced a bold reform of its tax system, which included the adoption of a flat-rate income tax. Until then, only a few countries, including the transition countries of Estonia , Latvia , and Lithuania , had adopted a flat-rate income tax. This reform has naturally attracted a great deal of attention, as many countries have been toying with the idea of a flat-rate income tax. In this paper we investigate the tax incidence of Russia 's flat-rate reform. Although there are studies on the incidence of the personal income tax in other countries, to the best of our knowledge no study has been conducted so far on the incidence of income taxes in a transition economy.