Study on tax-privileged or non-contributory salary components

Companies have numerous opportunities to increase the remuneration of their employees outside of formal wage or salary payments through other real or earmarked financial benefits. As such benefits or salary components are often not taxed or at least taxed at a lower rate under current tax law, companies and employees have a latent incentive to take advantage of these opportunities. As a result, the actual wage and salary payments are lower than they would be without these benefits, resulting in lower tax revenues. In addition to the tax system, this also affects the social security system, as tax-privileged benefits are often not subject to contributions.

To date, there have been hardly any relevant studies on the extent to which companies make use of these benefits and what effects they have on the tax and social security system. The project is intended to lay the foundation for obtaining empirically reliable figures on the scale and effects of these conversion options in the future. To this end, the individual options were presented in detail and their effects analyzed. Secondly, existing data collections were examined for their suitability to quantify the relevant issues and possible concepts for independent data collection and the associated resource expenditure were developed.

In cooperation with:

  • Prof. Dr. Laszlo Goerke, Universität Tübingen
  • Jürgen Leibfritz, WP/StB, Kanzlei HSP, Tübingen

Commissioned by:

  • Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs

Project team:

Contact Person:

Dr. Peter Gottfried

Status:

2010 - 2010